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1784-1884. 



BY 0. P. FITZGERALD, D.D 

Editor Nashville Christian Advocate. 










NASHVILLE, TENN. ! 

SOtUTHERN METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 



A' 



Y 




■^■^ ia the year 1885, 

By the Book Agents of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
in the Office of the 




LC Control Number 



tmp96 027332 



no 



i Word, 



I HAD no thought of making a book when these "Cen- 
tenary Cameos" were begun. They are now printed in 
this form because so many have asked that it be done. 

At the beginning of the Centenary year the thought 
came to me that perhaps the best way to put the spirit of 
the Methodist movement before my readers would be to 
show first wliat God had done in the holy men and women 
who led in the gracious work, and then what it had done 
hy them. 

The writing of these Cameos has been a means of grace 
to me. My own heart has glowed while keeping company 
with our heroic and saintly spiritual ancestry. May the 
Lord bless the book to the reader ! 

0. P. F1TZGEEA1.D. 

Nashville, April, 1885. 



Bontents, 



•.oO<5- PAGE 

John Wesley 7 

John Fletcher, 11 

Thomas Coke , , 16 

George Whitefield, . , , , 22 

John Nelson • 26 

Adam Clarke 32 

Charles Wesley 38 

Rowland Hill 41 

Thomas Walsh 47 

Susanna Wesley 53 

Richard Watson 57 

Gideon Ouseley 63 

William Bramwell . . 69 

Countess of Huntingdon 75 

William Carvosso. 81 

Joseph Benson 89 

Hester Ann Rogers 94 

Thomas Olivers 102 

Mary Bosanquet Ill 

Francis Asbury 120 

Robert Strawbridge 130 

Thomas Webb 136 

Barbara Heck 145 

Jesse Lee 153 

William McKendree 168 

John Easter 178 

Robert Williams 184 

Philip Bruce 190 

(5) 





6 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


Hoi 


'e Hull 197 


.LiAM Capers 205 


Thomas Wake 211 


Thomas H. Stockton 220 


James A. Duncan 284 


Samuel Anthony 248 


A. ; 


L. P. Green 258 


Pet 

Thc 


ER DouB 275 


)MAs Stringfield 295 


Wii 


7ARD McGehee 308 


.LiAM Kendrick 323 


Geokge W. D. Harris 337 


Ma] 


RGARET LaVINIA KeLLEY , 345 


. .^(pillliistratinT^R.^-- . 


1. 


John Weslej. 16. Eobert Strawbridge. 


2. 


John Fletcher. 17. Thomas Webb. 


3. 


Thomas Coke. 18. Barbara Heck. 


4. 


George Whitefield. 19. William McKendree. 


5. 


John Nelson. 20. William Capers. 


6. 


Adam Clarke. 21. Thomas Ware. 


7. 


Charles Wesley. 22. Thomas H. Stockton.' 


8. 


Kowland Hill. 23. James A. Duncan. 


9. 


Susanna Wesley. 24. Samuel Anthony. 


10. 


Eichard Watson. 25. A. L. P. Green. 


11. 


Countess of Huntingdon. 26. Peter Doub. 


12. 


William Carvosso. 27. Thomas Stringfield. 


13. 


Hester Ann Eogers. 28. Edward McGehee. 


14. 


Mary Bosanquet. 29. William Kendrick. 


15. 


Francis Asbury. 30. George W. D. Harris. 




31. Margaret Lavinia Kelley. 

• 


; 





Jshn Weslef. 

HERE lie stands — the most mas- 
terful, the serenest, the most be- 
nignant figure in the religious 
history of the last hundred years. 
In the perspective of a century 
he rounds out with still increasing beauty, 
symmetry, and grandeur of character. His 
work abides, and his personality abides with 
it. He still leads the ever-swelling ranks of 
the Methodist host. Among his successors, a 
greater hath not yet risen, nor is likely to rise 
hereafter. He did not merely " blaze " the 
path that led back to New Testament doctrine, 
polity, and usage, but he conducted the march 
across the Bed Sea of early persecution and 
the wilderness of conflicting opinion. He was 
a general whose genius originated the tactics 
by which his victories were won. Launched 



8 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



upon stormy waters, lie held the rudder with a 
hand always steady, a vision always clear, a 
heart always brave, a faith always strong. 

There he stands— a marvel of energy and 
patience, moving with directness of aim and 
the momentum of a mighty will, and yet with 
that reserve force which is the mark of high- 
est greatness. He was not a comet sweeping 
through the heavens, leaving a transient trail 
of fire, but a star that swings and shines in its 
orbit unchanged through the circling years. 
Power and repose, velocity and steadiness of 
movement, intensity and equipoise, are com- 
mingled wonderfully in this man with a mis- 
sion from God. 

There he stands — a preacher whose words 
stirred vast masses of men and women as the 
winds stir the ocean, but who is himself calm, 
ruling the storm he has raised. His words 
send a thrill of new life into the heart of a 
kingdom, and rouse the wrath of a sleeping 
hierarchy, but they are words wisely weighed, 
hitting the mark, with no rebound. Illumi- 
nated, called, commissioned, anointed from on 
high, he speaks as the oracles of God; not as 
the ecclesiastical scribes of his day, but like 
his Master — as one having authority. A schol- 
ar, with the ancient and modern learning at 



JOHN WESLEY. 9 

liis command, he preaches to the common peo- 
ple in language so simple that tliey hear him 
gladly, and yet with a diction so pure and clas- 
sic that his printed sermons are to this day the 
envy and admiration of the learned. 

There he stands -^the most prolific writer of 
his generation; whose busy brain and tireless 
pen sowed the British kingdom broadcast with 
Christian reading adapted to the wants of man- 
kind, and leaving behind him a body of theo- 
logical literature making a library in itself — 
books that are among the recognized standards 
of belief for millions of Christian men and 
women in all parts of the world. 

There he stands — a traveler who felt within 
him the spring of perpetual motion, love for 
souls he longed to save; whose parish was the 
world. When we read of the number of miles 
he rode, in connection with the number of books 
he wrote, the record seems almost miraculous, 
if not incredible. 

There he stands — a living embodiment of 
positive conviction and catholicity of spirit, 
contending earnestly for the faith once deliv- 
ered to the saints, and yet ready to clasp hands 
with every man who loves truth and follows 
Christ. A stickler for order, a man of method, 
an organizer of first quality, he broke through 



10 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



all conventionalities that stood in the way of 
the work of saving souls. All Christendom 
claims kinship with him now, and the Church 
that thrust him forth from her pulpits fondly 
insists that he lived and died in her commun- 
ion. In contact with him all devout souls feel 
the throb of a heart that loved every saint and 
pitied every sinner on earth. 

There he stands — a compact, erect figure, 
with a face ruddy and clear in complexion, 
aquiline nose, eyes clear blue and penetrating, 
mouth firm yet persuasive, a positive chin 
hinting power and tenacity, forehead sloping 
gently upward until it touches the white hair 
that crowns a noble head, and falling back be- 
hind his ears heightens the impression of apos- 
tolic simplicity, dignity, power, gentleness, and 
sanctity. This is John Wesley, the chosen 
instrument of the Lord for the revival of New 
Testament Christianity. 





JOHN FLETCHER. 





1 


i 



J©hH FletiGl^eF. 

E came upon the scene in 1757. 
He came when he was wanted, 
sent of God. He was a bnrning 
and a shining light, and blazes 
like a ball of fire in the religions 
heavens unto this hour. 

Born and bred in Switzerland, under Calvin- 
istic influence and teaching, he left the Uni- 
yersity of Geneva, where he ranked high as a 
scholar, an Arminian in belief. Providentially 
turned away from the military career which he 
had chosen, he went to London, where he fell 
in with the Methodists, and was converted to 
God — converted with a clearness and power 
characteristic of those days wdien the fresh 
baptism of the Holy Spirit gave extraordinary 
powder to the Word, and a peculiar vividness to 
religious experience. His mental constitution 
made him a Methodist, the grace of God made 
him a saint. His keen and cultured intellect, 
that had recoiled from the sterner theology of 
his fathers, reveled with unspeakable delight 
in the new world of thought now fully opened 

(11) 



12 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



to him. His ardent soul exulted with holy joy- 
in a realization of pardon, peace, and joy in 
the Holy Ghost. 

Taking holy orders, he lost no time in be- 
ginning the work of the ministry. He declined 
a parish, with light labor and good income, 
saying it afforded "too much money and too 
little work." He went to Madeley, where he 
found work enough, and where he exercised a 
ministry so full of toil, self-denial, and saint- 
liness, that it has made the place fragrant 
with sacred associations to millions of Chris- 
tian men and women. 

His providential function in the develop- 
ment of the new movement was twofold. It 
was as if an Augustine and an a Kempis were 
combined in one and the same person. He 
was the exponent and defender of the doctrines 
of Methodism, Confronting the assailants that 
rose up against it on all sides, he received on 
his broad shield the arrows that flew thick and 
fast, and advancing upon the enemies of the 
truth as held by him and his colaborers, put 
them to rout. The logic he learned at Geneva 
was turned irresistibly against its dogmas. 
His " Checks " remain to this hour an effective 
warning against insidious error, a fortification 
behind which the champions of evangelical 



JOHN FLETCHER. 13 



truth have felt themselves secure against all 
assailants. He helped to save Methodism from 
the folly of fanatical adherents, and from the 
misrepresentations of open foes. He knew no 
man after the flesh when called upon to defend 
the truth; whether in his own camp or outside 
of it, the propagator of error was detected by 
his keen and watchful eye, and beaten down 
by his swift and well-directed blows. To him 
belongs the immortal honor of being the in- 
strument, under God, of keeping the theology 
of Methodism in the middle current between 
the extreme of a rigid Augustinianism on the 
one side and a loose and ruinous Antinomi- 
anism on the other. 

He was also the exemplar of what the doc- 
trines of grace, as held and taught by Method- 
ists, can do for one who translates them into 
experience. He was a living epistle in whom 
all could read the proofs of the power of the 
gospel to refine and exalt human nature. In 
the pulpit he was mighty; his sermons glowed 
with spiritual fervor, were models of the pur- 
est English, and were delivered with wonder- 
ful energy. He went from house to house 
ministering to the poor and the sick, comfort- 
ing the sorrowing, and admonishing the wicked, 
exercising the utmost self-denial in his apparel 



14 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



and mode of living that lie might help the 
needy. His growth in grace was rapid and con- 
tinuous. His presence was a benediction. In 
his devotions he seemed to enter the holiest of 
holies; his face shone like that of Moses when 
he came down from the mount where he had 
talked with God. In contact with him " every 
heart caught fire from the flame that burned 
in his soul." In his daily living he did not 
fall below the high standard presented in his 
writings. Christian perfection was more per- 
suasively presented in such a life than it could 
be in any book. A great company of believing 
souls in the generation just passed have turned 
their faces and their steps to the sun-lit heights 
w^here he stands and beckons to them; and 
many who will read these lines have loftier 
spiritual ideals, deeper joys, and brighter hopes 
because this man's experience proved to them 
that holiness is a possible attainment. His life 
was hid with Christ in God, and presented to 
succeeding generations a picture of the trans- 
forming power of the gospel that will be a de- 
light and an inspiration to receptive and aspir- 
ing souls throughout the brightening ages. 

The waters of earthly oblivion will close 
over many names once familiar in human 
speech, but that of John Fletcher will remain. 



JOHN FLETCHER. 15 



The image o£ the vicar of Madeley — small of 
stature, with the face of a saint, an eye that 
eonld melt in tears or flash like lightning, a 
head of classic mold, a voice of rare melody 
and power, a presence gracious yet command- 
ing^will not fade from the minds of men. 






ss 




T is a hard matter to bring the pho- 
tographic lens to bear upon this 
man. An angel flying through 
the heavens with the everlasting 
gospel to preach unto them that 
dwell on the earth is the fitting description of 
this worker of tireless energy, unquenchable 
zeal, and indomitable will. 

Born at Brecon, Wales, in 1747, he had the 
quick-kindling Welsh blood. The only child 
of wealthy parents, he had the advantages of 
the highest culture, with the peculiar dangers 
attendant upon such inheritance. Escaping 
the perils of vice, and breaking through the 
meshes of infidelity that had begun to be 
woven around him, he entered upon the labors 
of a minister of the Church of England at 
South Petherton, Somersetshire. His ardor 
was such as to excite the wonder of his pa- 
rishioners. At his own expense he enlarged 
his church to make room for the crowds that 
flocked to hear him preach. He met Maxfield, 
the first lay preacher of Methodism, and from 
(16) 




THOMAS COKE. 



THOMAS COKE. 17 



that moment a new direction was given to his 
life. More spiritual views of religion were 
unfolded to him. He was receptive and re- 
sponsive. Soon afterward, while on a visit to 
a family in Devonshire, he met a Methodist 
class-leader — an unlettered man, but wise in 
the things of God. They talked and prayed 
together. The rich young scholar was taught 
the way of the Lord more perfectly by the 
humble believer who had been taught by the 
Holy Spirit. While preaching in a country 
place not long thereafter, the full tide of divine 
life poured into his soul, filling it with joy un- 
speakable. He was swept irresistibly into the 
current of the new movement. He was "ad- 
monished" by the bishop, dismissed by his 
rector, threatened by the mob, and "chimed 
out of the Church." He then took to street- 
preaching, and soon formally cast in his lot 
with the Methodists for life. 

He and Wesley first met in 1776 in Somer- 
setshire. " I had much conversation with him," 
said Wesley, "and a union began then which 
I trust shall never end." Wholly dissimilar 
in mental constitution, they were alike in the 
possession of extraordinary executive energy, 
and thenceforth it was as if a second Wesley 
had been sent forth as a flaming torch to kin- 
2 



18 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



die the light of life in the dark places of the 
earth. He too was an organizer, and the im- 
press of his mind remains to this day upon 
the Methodism of two continents and the isles 
of the sea. 

The record of his travels and his preaching 
reads like a chapter of New Testament per- 
sonal history. As we read we feel that we are 
breathing New Testament air. Once a year 
for many 5^ears he visited Ireland, and pre- 
sided in its Conferences. Through England, 
Scotland, Wales, and America, he passed to 
and fro, sowing seeds that sprung up and made 
the wilderness to bloom, quickening the pulses 
of the sluggish and rousing the hopes of the 
desponding by the inspiration of an energy that 
never flagged, and a hopefulness that never 
abated. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean eight- 
een times, its ever-rolling billows being the 
fit emblem of his own unresting spirit. A 
naturally vivacious temperament, strengthened 
and steadied by the power of an indwelling 
Christ, made him incapable of feeling that 
sense of defeat which has beclouded the lives 
and shadowed the dying-beds of so many he- 
roic men of different mold. He planned great 
and difficult enterprises, and even while cooler 
heads and less sanguine hearts were fearing 



THOMAS COKE. 19 

and predicting failure, a successful consum- 
mation turned evil prophecies into joyful con- 
gratulations. 

He was not merely a missionary— he was in 
himself a missionary society. He gave his 
prayers, his labor, his money to the work — he 
gave all, and he gave it ungrudgingly, joy- 
fully. He laid himself and his patrimonial 
possessions upon the altar of Christianity with- 
out reserve, and never took back any part of 
the willing sacrifice. "I want," he said, "the 
wings of an eagle and the voice of a trump- 
et, that I may proclaim the gospel through 
the East and the West, the North and the 
South." 

He was the first Methodist bishop — the first 
of a line of godly, gifted, and heroic men who 
have vindicated their successorship to the 
apostles by their soundness in faith and doc- 
trine, and the abundance of their labors. The 
work done in America by him and his succes- 
sors, under God, is such as to make the attempt 
to deny the validity of their ofiice and func- 
tions, based on the figment of a tactual suc- 
cession, sound like the drivel of idiocy. He 
was the first Protestant American bishop of 
any order. His diocese embraced the conti- 
nent, and was not too large for his energies. 



20 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



The millions of American Methodists, in cele- 
brating their Centenary, will turn with reverent 
affection to him as they review the mercies of 
God and the works of the men who laid the 
foundations of the great organism which took 
form with the birth of our national life, and 
which has been so potent an agency in the 
development and conservation of its liberties, 
its social welfare, and its religious prosper- 
ity. 

At the age of nearly seventy years — the love 
of souls still burning in his heart — he offered 
to go as missionary to the East Indies. The 
Conference hesitated on account of the ex- 
pense; but he proposed to pay all the charges 
of the outfit himself — not less than thirty thou- 
sand dollars. The objections were overcome, 
and he set sail. It was his last voyage. He 
died on the way, and was buried in the sea — a 
fitting cemetery for the body of a man whose 
influence, like a gulf-stream of spiritual life, 
still flows on, imparting spiritual warmth, beau- 
ty, and fruitfulness in its course. 

In stature low, with a body small but solid, an 
effeminate voice, small features, a mobile mouth, 
quick-glancing eyes, shapely nose; a face in 
which native imperiousness and gracious soft- 
ness blended; a head rounded out in the frontal 



THOMAS COKE. 



21 



region and on top, with ample driving-power 
behind; iron-gray hair, thick and slightly curl- 
ing; his whole presence dominant, electric, 
and yet sjowitiiel — the figure of Thomas Coke 
will hold its place in Methodist history. 





Se©Fie WhiliefieM. 

CHOES o£ his voice are still in 
the air o£ Great Britain and Amer- 
ica, and will linger nntil they min- 
gle with the rapturous shouts 
of the millennial morning. He 
flamed and flew like a seraph on Avings of love, 
preaching more sermons to more persons, and 
with more immediate and visible effect, than 
any other man. 

The souls of the multitudes became plastic 
at his touch, and were molded into form by the 
master- workman ordained of God for the task. 
By every token he was an instrument chosen 
of the Lord. In his career the wonders of the 
earlier days of Christianity are more than 
equaled, and blind and willful must be the 
skepticism that refuses to see and confess in 
the record the power of the Highest. 

True, he was a born orator. He had the per- 
son, the voice, the gesture, the genius for ora- 
tory. He might have won distinction on the 
hustings, at the bar, or on the stage. But there 
was in him an element of power beyond what 
(22) 




GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 



GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 23 



could be tlie product of these natural gifts. It 
was born in him when he felt the stirrings of 
new spiritual life after his mental agonies, vig- 
ils, fastings, and tears at Oxford. It was the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost that kindled with- 
in him a flame that burned with unabated in- 
tensity to the very last. The wonderful effects 
of his preaching were no less abiding than 
powerful. The thousands who were by him 
melted into penitence and led to Christ during 
one visit would greet him as faithful believers 
when he came again after a decade of years 
had tested the divinity and permanency of the 
work wrought in them under his ministry. 
His work was the work of faith with power. 
Wherever the faith is found, the power is 
found. That the gospel was the power of God 
unto salvation he knew — it had saved him. If 
it could save him, it could save anybody. The 
mercy that stooped to him could reach the low- 
est. So he felt, and so he preached with melted 
heart to hearts that melted as he spoke. He 
believed in election, because on no other the- 
ory could he account for the fact that he, the 
chief of sinners, had found mercy. Bat in 
the full tide of his evangelical fervor he made 
the listening thousands feel that the elect are 
whosoever will. The worst of sinners, cut to 



24 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the heart by liis mighty appeals to their con- 
sciences, took heart when he told them of the 
loye of the crucified and risen Christ, and with 
trampet voice, radiant face, and streaming 
eyes bore personal testimony to his power and 
willingness to save to the uttermost all who 
would come unto God by him. 

There was no permanent breach of fellow- 
ship between Wesley theArminian, and White- 
field the Calvinist. That God w^as with them 
both none can doubt. That he overruled the 
difference for the furtherance of the gospel 
now seems equally clear. It was the means 
by which Non-conformity in England was 
saved from the spiritual deadness that was 
creeping upon it. Scotland and Wales thrilled 
with new religious life, Ireland's warm but 
erring heart stirred at least for one auspicious 
season, and the reaction following the great 
revival among the Puritans in New England 
checked, and a fresh tide of salvation made to 
pour its life-giving floods through all her bor- 
ders. Gracious lesson! We have been slow 
of heart to learn it as we ought. We must not 
magnify what God does not magnify. What 
does not bar his blessing should not bar our 
fellowship. God is sovereign; man is free. 
We can clasp hands on this confession, and do 



GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 



25 



as Wesley and WbitejQeld did — love one an- 
other, and bid one another Godspeed in the 
blessed work of saving sonls. 

Tall of stature, with regular features beam- 
ing with buoyancy and kindness, eyes blue and 
bright, with a presence at once dignified and 
genial, a voice of marvelous compass and mel- 
ody, peculiar and inimitable grace of manner 
iu and out of the pul^Dit — George Whitefield 
was naturally endowed for the great work he 
was called to do, and the baptism from on high 
completed his equipment for the wonderful 
part he was to take in the resurrection of 
evangelical religion. 



Wff : 




J©hn ReIg©H. 

EAVE, burning, great-hearted 
John Nelson! If the grace of 
God had not made him a saint, 
he would have been a hero af tef 
the world's fashion. The pent- 
up forces in his nature would have broken 
forth in some way to make him a man of mark. 
He had a brave English heart, and a stout En- 
glish body. When provoked, before his con- 
version, to use carnal weapons, no antagonist 
who felt the weight of his hand wished to feel 
it again. His name to this day is the syno- 
nym for sanctified pluck, quick mother-wit, 
and unfailing common sense. 

He tells us that God had followed him with 
conviction ever since he was ten years old. 
He had strong passions and a tender consci- 
ence, and his youth was stormy. Though not 
an immoral man, he was profoundly agitated 
by a sense of his spiritual needs. He went 
from Church to Church seeking help, but in 
vain. At Moorfields he heard Whitefield 
preach; but though, as he tells us, "he was 
(26) 




JOHN NELSON. 



JOHN NELSON. 27 



willing to fight for him," he got no relief. His 
wretchedness was extreme. He slept but lit- 
tle, and had terrible dreams, from which he 
awoke trembling and dripping with sweat. 

He went to hear Wesley. He was marvel- 
oiisly affected as the venerable man of God 
pushed back his hair, and (as he thought) 
fixed his gaze directly upon him. " My heart," 
he says, "beat like the pendulum of a clock, 
and when he spoke I thought his whole dis- 
course was aimed at me." He said to himself: 
"This man can tell the secrets of my breast; 
he has shown me the remedy for my wretch- 
edness, even the blood of Christ." 

He soon found peace with God, and gave 
himself to religious duties with all the ardor 
of his temperament. The fierce opposition he 
met only intensified his earnestness, and gave 
him opportunity to turn opposers into prose- 
lytes. He fasted, he read the Scriptures, stor- 
ing his excellent memory with texts that he 
used with great readiness and skill, confound- 
ing his adversaries and encouraging himself 
in devotion to Christ. 

With his soul filled with love and holy tri- 
umph, he went to Bir stall to tell his family 
and neighbors what the Lord had done for his 
soul. At first he was looked upon as being 



28 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



under a delusion of the devil, but soon most of 
his immediate kindred were converted. The 
circle widened; he stood in his door and ad- 
dressed the people; many conversions took 
place; the ale-houses were deserted, and the 
moral condition of the town completely changed. 
Led by the Holy Spirit, he had become a 
preacher before he knew it. 

His ministry being thus accredited by its 
gracious fruits, Mr. Wesley, who had come 
from London to visit him, recognized him as 
a "helper," and his band of converts as one of 
his united societies. 

Hewing stone by day and preaching at night, 
he traversed Yorkshire, Cornwall, Lincoln- 
shire, Lancashire, and other counties. His 
courage and tact were unfailing. Under his 
eloquence raging enemies became weeping 
penitents. The seeds of truth sown by him in 
stormy times took root, sprung up, and grew. 
The moral desert bloomed at his coming, and 
the Methodism of all that region where he 
mostly labored bears unto this day the impress 
of his ministry. It is a stalwart Methodism, 
resisting the blandishments of the world and of 
Government-pampered ecclesiasticism at home, 
and of such quality as to bear transportation 
to the ends of the earth. 



JOHN NELSON. 29 



Impressed into the army, and thrown into 
jail at Bradford, he was undaunted. The blood 
and filth from a slaughter-house flowed into 
his dungeon. "It smelt," he says, "like a pig- 
sty; but my soul was so filled with the love of 
God that it was a paradise to me." Food and 
water were supplied him by the people through 
a hole in the door, and during the long hours 
of the night they joined him in singing hymns. 
The jail at Bradford, like that at Philippi, was 
made a Bethel. "I cannot fear," he said; "I 
cannot fear either man or devil so long as I 
find the love of God as I do now." 

He was taken to Leeds and to York. It was, 
he says, as if hell was moved from beneath to 
meet him at his coming. *The streets and win- 
dows were thronged with a hooting rabble. 
"But," he says, "the Lord made my brow like 
brass, so that I could look at them as grass- 
hoppers, and pass through the city as if there 
had been none in it but God and me." Girded 
with military trappings, and a musket put into 
his hands, he was ordered to parade. He said 
he would wear them "as a cross," but would 
not fight. Beproving and exhorting all who 
approached him, a great company gathered to 
see him, to whom he preached so convincingly 
that they went away with friendly hearts, and 



80 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the seeds of saving truth lodged in their 
souls. 

With -undiminished zeal and constantly in- 
creasing influence he prosecuted his ministry. 
On several occasions it seemed that a martyr's 
death would crown his life, and it is evident 
that his heroic soul was always ready to meet 
such a fate with exultant joy. He was stoned, 
beaten, and trampled upon in the streets. His 
coming to a new place was usually the signal 
for an uproar, the sturdy soldier of Christ 
standing his ground under showers of missiles, 
and seldom failing to leave the field a con- 
queror. 

He went on these rounds season after sea- 
son; the opposition became less and less bit- 
ter; he grew in popularity, and the work of 
God mightily prevailed. His coming was now 
greeted by welcoming multitudes; and this 
man, who preached the first Methodist lay ser- 
mon in Leeds in 1743, and who had been raised 
up from the ranks of the common people for 
the work to which he was called, lived to see 
the triumph of the cause for which he had 
toiled, suffered, and almost died, and to be re- 
garded with reverent admiration and affection 
by a great company of men and women, many 
of whom were his spiritual children. 



JOHN NELSON. 31 



He was of noble mien and commanding 
presence, liis features expressing strength, dig- 
nity, repose, and benignity — every inch a man, 
in every instinct a gentleman, in all the round- 
ed excellences of his Christian character a 
saint. 

In 1774 he died. A procession nearly half 
a mile long, "sobbing and singing," bore his 
body through the streets of Leeds to its burial 
in his native Birstall; while thousands of spec- 
tators looked on with uncovered heads and 
sorrowful faces. "Aged men who remembered 
and shared his earliest trials, and children who 
had heard the story of them at the fireside by 
their fathers, followed him to the grave as a 
grateful people follow a fallen hero who has 
helped to save their country." 

The sturdy Yorkshire stone-cutter holds his 
place in the foreground of the picture as he 
was always found in the forefront of the fight; 
and the story of valiant, true-hearted John 
Nelson will thrill coming generations, and 
give them the inspiration to be derived from 
the contemplation of as noble a Christian hero 
as ever wielded the sword of the Spirit. 



PdaHi ClaFl^e 




LOW, strong-bodied, healthy boy 
— the son of a frugal Irish school- 
master. The stinging taunts of 
his teacher and fellow-students 
roused his brain from its leth- 
argy. The exercises of a Methodist class- 
meeting — to which he had gone with his moth- 
er — awoke in his soul the desire for that 
spiritual life of which he heard its members 
speak with such certainty and power. His in- 
tellectual awakening was followed by acquisi- 
tions of learning that have given him a place 
among the great scholars of the world. His 
spiritual awakening led him to consecrate his 
great learning to the glory of God, and made 
him one of the brightest of all the clustered 
stars that glitter in the galaxy of Methodist 
worthies. 

He was cradled in poverty; one of his earli- 
est recollections was the "weeping and wail- 
ing" in the household when the last acre of 
the family property was gone. He was a hardy 
boy, of uncommon physical strength. Among 
(32) 




ADAM CLARKE. 



ADAM CLARKE. 33 



the breezy hills of Londouderry, with plenty 
of outdoor exercise, his naturally strong con- 
stitution was developed for his extraordinary 
labors in coming years. With a father of 
sturdy English stock, a mother of Scotch blood, 
and with Irish nativity and environment, he 
had something of the steadiness, the vigor, and 
the glow of all three of these nationalities. 

His severe puritanic training inspired him 
with such a fear of God as prevented him from 
taking pleasure in sin. His mother taught 
him to pray, and prayed with him; but his 
views of God were such as inspired more of 
dread than any other feeling. He tells us that 
at thirteen he learned to dance, and the love 
of dancing became a passion with him — he 
"would scarcely walk bat in measured time, 
and was constantly tripping, moving, and shuf- 
fling, in all times and places." He bore his 
testimony afterward that dancing was to him 
"a perverting influence — an unmixed moral 
evil." "Let them plead for it who will," he 
says, "but I know it to be evil, and that only." 
Overcoming this fascination, he gave himself 
with ardor to mental cultivation. He read 
with avidity all the books that he could get 
— his intellectual tastes advancing as he ad- 
vanced in years. 
3 



34 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



The Methodists came to Coleraine, where 
he lived. A stray anecdote read a few days 
before gave him the first intimation of the ex- 
istence of such a people. Learning that one 
of them would preach one evening at a farm- 
place called Burnside, he went with another 
youth to hear him. Now for the first time he 
saw a Methodist preacher — John Brettell — a 
tall, thin man, with long hair and "serious- 
looking countenance." (The giggling, over- 
jolly Methodist preacher was not often seen 
in those days.) Being deeply impressed and 
drawn to the man, he heard him again. The 
text was, "Behold, I stand at the door, and 
knock." That was a nail in a sure place. His 
conviction deepened until he was in an agony 
of soul. His conversion, when it came at last, 
was clear — like a sunburst through a black 
cloud. 

He lost no time in joining the Methodist 
Society. "When I met in class," he says, "I 
learned more in a week than I had learned be- 
fore in a month. I understood the preaching 
better, and getting acquaintance with my own 
heart, and hearing the experience of God's 
people, I soon got acquainted with God him- 
self." 

The hand of God was upon him. Giving 



ADAM CLARKE. 35 



himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures, 
and beginning presently to exhort, he was soon 
traveling a circuit of his own on Sundays. 
Mr. Wesley, hearing of the promise of the 
lad, invited him over to the Kingswood School. 
His stay was short. After Mr. Wesley had 
laid his hands on his head, and prayed over 
him, he was sent as a preacher to the Bradford 
Circuit — the youngest man of all the Method- 
ist preachers, being only twenty-two years old. 

The success of his ministry attested his call 
to it. Often his congregations were so crowd- 
ed that he had to climb into the house by a 
window; and at times he would be compelled 
to preach in the open air, where he held great 
crowds spell-bound even under pelting rains 
and on deep snow. Revivals kindled wherever 
he went, and it was seen by all that another 
master-workman was building for the genera- 
tions to come. 

With a bright half-guinea, which he found 
while digging in the school-house garden at 
Kingswood, he had bought a Hebrew gram- 
mar, in the use of which he made the begin- 
ning of his vast acquisitions and labors in Ori- 
ental learning. He rode, read, and studied, 
mastering the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Samari- 
tan, Chaldee, and Syriac versions of the Script- 



36 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ures, and most of the languages of Western 
Europe. There was no branch of literature 
or physical science with which he did not be- 
come in some degree familiar. He was elected 
to membership in the London, Asiatic, Geo- 
logical, and other learned societies. The Gov- 
ernment called him to high official position 
where his scholarship could be employed for 
the honor of his country and the welfare of 
humanity. 

But his services in behalf of general litera- 
ture and science were only incidental. He 
never sunk the preacher in the mere man of 
letters. His greatest work is his immortal 
Commentary on the Scriptures — a work which 
still holds its place in Christian literature; a 
rich treasury of Biblical knowledge. Some 
parts of it are more curious than practical, and 
later writers have advanced beyond him in 
some respects; but his Commentary is one 
which few Biblical scholars would be willing 
to dispense with. It is at once a lasting mon- 
ument to the fame of the author, and an honor 
to the Methodism which developed under its 
peculiar system a genius so strong and so 
fruitful. 

He will stand in his niche during the pass- 
ing centuries: a stout, comely figure, of gra- 



ADAM CLARKE. 37 



cious presence; round and deep-chested, strong- 
limbed, with large, well-formed head; snowy 
hair setting off his ruddy complexion; heavy 
nose, full lips, a firm chin, and a magnetic eye 
that held the gazer's look — that is Adam Clarke, 
the self-taught scholar, the inspired preacher, 
the ornament of literature, the true benefactor 
of humanity, the humble and consecrated serv- 
ant of Christ, who, crowned with years and 
honors, just before the sudden death which 
called him home to God, could say: "I feel a 
simple heart. The prayers of my childhood 
are yet precious to me; and the simple hymns 
which 1 sung when a child I sing now with 
unction and delight." 











OET of the Methodist movement, 
he was as evidently born to sing 
as his greater brother was to 
lead. 

He was the poet of Methodist 
doctrine, his hymns crystallizing in exquisite 
forms the very essence of the gospel truths 
that in the great revival were thrilling the 
awakened multitude with the power of a fresh 
revelation from God. From these hymns a 
body of sound divinity might be constructed 
as solid as granite and aglow with the light of 
sanctified genius. The doctrines of Method- 
ism have by him been sung into the hearts of 
thousands and tens of thousands of men and 
women whose prejudices no force of logic or 
persuasion could have moved. His lyrics have 
made their way where dry polemics could not 
have found entrance, and are working as a doc- 
trinal leaven in every evangelical Church on 
earth. 

He was preeminently the poet of Christian 
experience. The molten-golden notes of his 
(38) 




CHARLES WESLEY. 



CHARLES WESLEY. 39 



songs were the outflowings of a soul melted in 
the fires of the latter-day Pentecost. 

His penitential hymns are the sighings and 
sobbings of a soul that had sunk down into 
the depths of self-despair, and lying prostrate 
before God urged its misery as its strongest 
plea for mercy. The backslider's shame and 
grief and fear are voiced by him in tones that 
have awaked echoes in unnumbered aching, 
burdened souls. The unutterable anguish and 
infinite pity of the Son of God, the groans of 
Gethsemane, and the blood of Calvary, set 
forth in his pulsing lines, have broken the 
hardest hearts, and made a channel through 
which the Comforter has entered to help and 
to heal. 

The peace that follows pardon was sung by 
him in notes that seem to have floated down 
from the skies. The joy of the newborn soul 
is told by him in seraphic strains that might 
mingle without discord with the halleluiahs of 
the glorified hosts of heaven. He rides on the 
sky, the moon is under his feet, and he chal- 
lenges the very angels of God to offer a more 
fervent adoration or a more burning love to the 
Lamb that was slain and that liveth again. 

In the liturgies of the great historical 
Churches his hymns mingle with the thun- 



40 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



der-tones of grand organs in cathedrals in 
which the great ones of the earth worship the 
King of kings; they are the battle-songs of 
the moving hosts of Methodism in all lands; 
in countless Christian homes, at morning and 
evening prayer, their melody ascends in thanks- 
giving and praise to the Father of mercies; 
their music soothes the heart of sorrow, and 
falls sweetly on the ears of the dying that will 
presently be ravished with the songs of the 
saints in glory as the voice of many waters, 
and as the voice of mighty thunderings, and 
the voice of harpers harping wdth their harps. 
Short in stature, but erect and well-knit, with 
eyes kind and vivacious; a hint of sensuous- 
ness in the speaking lips and slightly adipose 
chin; a strong Roman nose, a noble forehead 
in which the perceptive organs are prominent; 
the whole face irradiated with a smile express- 
ing inward satisfaction and good- will to all the 
world — Charles Wesley, the first member of 
the " Holy Club " at Oxford, the first to re- 
ceive the name of Methodist, will go down all 
the coming ages as the sweetest singer of all 
the tuneful sons and daughters of Methodism. 










ROWLAND HILL. 



R©WlelF?d §ill 




LL England was throbbing with 
new spiritual life. Methodism 
was in the air. It penetrated 
everywhere, rousing to enmity 
those whom it failed to win to 
Christ and to better living. It reached Cam- 
bridge as it had reached Oxford — one of many 
instances showing that student-life is the re- 
ceptive period for the grace that molds the 
soul for eternity as well as for obtaining the 
knowledge that equips the man for the life 
that now is. This young man, of an old baro- 
nial English family noted for its energy and 
vivacity, felt the touch of the great revival, 
and was responsive thereto. He organized a 
band like unto the Oxford "Holy Club," and 
was stigmatized as a Methodist. Fletcher, of 
Madeley, had met his older brother, who, not 
long afterward, while preparing for the Lord's 
Supper, was converted, being "overpowered 
with ecstatic joy in the Eedeemer." This 
brother strengthened the faith of the young 
student by letters, while his parents grieved 



42 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



for liim as a disgrace to the family name. 
Even more was he helped by his sweet and 
gentle sister, Jane Hill, whose image hovers 
over the page that records the life of her 
brother like an angel-presence. She was one 
of those women of finest metal who live only 
for others — "like a fair taper when she shined 
to all the room, yet ronnd about her own sta- 
tion she cast a shadow, and shined to every- 
body but herself." She exhorted her brother 
to " stand faithful in the cause of his crucified 
Master," and when the storm was raging most 
fiercely to "cleave only the more closely to 
Jesus." 

Having been refused ordination by six bish- 
ops, he went forth under a higher commission. 
In prisons, in Dissenting chapels, in the open 
air, he preached with extraordinary power and 
unction. There was a great stir wherever he 
went. Again and again he was mobbed; tin 
pans were beaten, horns were blown, and bells 
were rung to drown his voice; he was pelted 
with dirt and eggs; and once he was shot at 
while preaching, the ball passing over his head. 
He was neither frightened nor much harmed. 
He continued to preach with unabated cour- 
age, and with increasing success. Tens of 
thousands in Bristol, Kingswood, Bath, and 



ROWLAND HILL. 43 



all over Gloucestershire, flocked to hear the 
message of God from this man whose wit never 
failed, whose facial expression could convey 
every emotion of the human heart, whose 
mighty appeals made strong men tremble. 
"I go to hear Eowland Hill," said Sheridan, 
"because his ideas come red-hot from the 
heart." His hearers laughed at his irrepress- 
ible humor, and melted under his tender en- 
treaties; they repented of the sins he laid 
bare with the faithfulness of a prophet of the 
Lord, and sought refuge in the Saviour he 
held up to them with streaming tears and ex- 
tended arms. If sometimes his humor was 
indulged too freely for the taste of some, it 
attracted the masses, and made a channel to 
the minds of many for the truth as it is in 
Jesus. It bubbled up and over like a spring 
— he could not keep it down. But it was only 
the illuminated fringe of the cloth whose warp 
and woof were of soundest texture. His voice 
was fine, having, as his friend and co-laborer 
Berridge said, "the accent for a field-preacher." 
In one of the darkest districts of London he 
founded Surrey Chapel, where for a half cent- 
ury he was as a column of light, whose beams 
shed evangelical illumination far and wide. 
From Surrey Chapel, as a center, he traveled 



44 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



and preached in all parts of the British king- 
dom, greeted everywhere by wondering and de- 
lighted thousands, and his word attended with 
convincing and converting power. "Except- 
ing my beloved and lamented Mr. Whitefield," 
wrote the Countess of Huntingdon, "I never 
witnessed any person's preaching wherein there 
were such displays of the divine glory and 
power. '^ His pulpit was open to all preach- 
ers of the gospel, of all sects and countries, 
and was thus exponential of the new spirit of 
the better time when dogmatic differences were 
to be subordinated to the higher claims of evan- 
gelical unity, and permitted no longer unduly 
to hamper the movement or hinder the inter- 
course of those who are followers of one Lord, 
and engaged in the common enterprise of 
bringing the world to the light and liberty of 
the gospel. 

Such a combination of humor, apostolic fer- 
vor, dignity, and sustained intellectual energy 
has rarely been seen among mankind. That 
he was one of the true leaders in the great re- 
vival, chosen of God, and specially endowed 
for the work he was to do, will be doubted 
only by those who are blind to all proofs of 
the inspiration and guidance of the Head of 
the Church in the lives of his servants. 



ROWLAND HILL, 



45 



In old age his wit, which was at times too 
caustic, was sweetened by love, his combative- 
ness was abated, and his whole nature mel- 
lowed and exalted by abounding grace. The 
seeds of truth he had sown had taken root in 
many souls. The rich and the great accorded 
to him admiration for his genius, while the 
masses of the people loved and revered him as 
an apostle. One of his nephews, who rose to 
be commander-in-chief of the British armies, 
received a grand ovation from the citizens of 
London on his return from the wars. Amid 
the acclamations of the rejoicing multitude 
the venerable preacher-uncle was recognized 
at the hero's side. " Here comes the good un- 
cle! three cheers for him!" shouted the joyful 
populace. 

A large body stout and strong; straight and 
soldier-like in bearing; a noble head with iron- 
gray hair thrown back, revealing an ample 
forehead; bushy eyebrows that could not con- 
ceal the kindly expression of his clear blue 
eyes that had in their glance the latent hu- 
mor that was in his soul; a Roman nose finely 
arched; full lips, and a mouth that even when 
he was in repose almost laughed; a chin that 
speaks strong will and good living ^ — that is 
Rowland Hill, the typical Englishman and great 



A 



46 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



independent Methodist, who will have a front 
place in the picture as long as succeeding Cen- 
tenaries shall call our people to celebrate the 
signal mercies of God. 







NE among tlie mixed multitude 
that stood listening to a Method- 
ist lay preacher on the parade- 
ground at Limerick, in 1749, was 
a thougtf ul, sad - faced young 
man. The text was: "Come unto me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will 
give you rest." It was the word in season 
to his burdened and hungry soul. He had re- 
volted against the Romanism in which he had 
been carefully trained by his parents. His 
nature was too earnest to allow him to sink 
into indifference; and the prevenient grace of 
God kept him from falling into gross wicked- 
ness. He sought relief in recreation, but found 
no peace. "A hell," he says, "opened in my 
breast." He fasted; he prayed to God, to 
saints, and to angels; he confessed to the 
priest; he would at times throw himself upon 
the ground and tear his hair in his agony. In 
his eighteenth year, for the first time, he had 
free access to the Bible, and for the first time 
prayed to God alone. He joined the Estab- 

(47) 



48 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



lished Chnrcli, formally renouncing the creed 
of his family. But still his soul was not at 
rest. " There was no rest in my bones, by rea- 
son of my sin," he says. 

When the Methodists came to Newmarket, 
his native village, he was drawn to them, and 
soon he came to see "not his guilt only, but 
the all-sufficiency of Christ." At one of their 
meetings "I was divinely assured," he says, 
"that God for Christ's sake had forgiven me 
all my sins; the Spirit of God bore witness 
with my spirit that I was a child of God. I 
broke out into tears of joy and love." 

Thenceforward his life was a demonstration 
of the supernatural element that had entered 
into it. It was, in the language of Robert 
Southey, such a life as "might indeed almost 
convince a Catholic that saints are to be found 
in other communions as well as in the Church 
of Rome." In Methodism he believed he saw 
the reproduction of the apostolic Church, and 
this conviction filled him with a sublime en- 
thusiasm. To promote its success he gave him- 
self to diligent study, mastering, in addition 
to his native Irish, the English, Latin, Greek, 
and Hebrew — the last being a special delight 
to him, the study by which " a man is enabled 
to converse with God, with holy angels, with 



THOMAS WALSH. 49 



patriarclis and prophets, and clearly unfold to 
men tlie mind of God from the language of 
God." His acquirements were so wonderful 
that it is not surprising that he believed that 
a divine inspiration aided him in his studies. 
Mr. "Wesley said of him that "he was so thor- 
oughly acquainted with the Bible that if he 
was questioned concerning any Hebrew word 
in the Old or any Greek word in the New 
Testament, he would tell, after a brief pause, 
not only how often one or tlie other occurred 
in the Bible, but what it meant in every place. 
Such a master of Biblical knowledge he never 
saw before, and never expected to see again." 
He was a living concordance of the Holy 
Scripture. 

Entering the ranks of the lay ministry, no 
man of that heroic time was more zealous, or 
laborious, or readier to suffer or die for Christ's 
sake. He walked thirty miles to his first ap- 
pointment, and the power that attended his 
word accredited him as the messenger of God. 
Through almost all Ireland, in cities, towns, 
and country, he passed, preaching twice and 
thrice a day — usually in the open air — and 
kindling the fires of evangelical revival as he 
went. Great crowds flocked to hear him, to 
whom he would often preach Jesus in their 
4 



50 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



own rough, but expressive Irish tongue with 
such power and pathos that they would weep 
and smite their breasts as he spoke. The 
street-beggars, melting under his gracious 
words, would kneel and pray as he passed. 
The warm Irish heart was touched with irre- 
sistible power by his eloquence, and even big- 
otry itself could not withstand the sanctity of 
his life and the power of his word. 

Against the Romanists as a people he never 
spoke an unkind word, though he did not shun 
to declare the whole counsel of God, and to 
refute their errors. It was impossible, how- 
ever, that such a man could escape persecu- 
tion. More than once he barely escaped a 
martyr's death, but never lost his courage or 
serenity of mind for a moment. 

His ministry of nine years was alike won- 
derful for its intensity and its fruitfulness. 
"I do not remember/' said Mr. Wesley, "ever 
to have known a preacher who, in so few years 
as he remained upon earth, was an instrument 
of converting so many sinners." 

It is said that he rarely smiled, and perhaps 
never laughed after he began his public min- 
istry. At times he would be lost in mental 
abstraction on his knees, with uplifted face, 
arms folded upon his breast, scarcely seem- 



THOMAS WALSH. 51 



ing to breathe, in a sort o£ ecstasy, his counte- 
ance shining with unearthly radiance while he 
held high communion Avith the invisible God. 
"When he prayed in public it was, says one 
who knew him, " as though the heavens were 
burst open, and God himself appeared in the 
congregation." 

In his private devotions he was at times 
lifted into such exalted moods as to be lost to 
all external things — absorbed in visions of the 
divine. For hours he would remain still as a 
statue, his face reflecting the illumination 
within. 

The tension was too great; his nervous sys- 
tem — the mysterious link connecting the body 
and the soul — broke down under the strain put 
upon it. Spiritual darkness settled upon his 
soul. His mental anguish was unspeakable. 
With groans and tears he bewailed the absence 
of his Saviour. His case was a mystery to his 
brethren; they could not understand how it 
was that such a man should come into such a 
state as this. In Dublin, London, and other 
places, public prayers Avere offered up for him. 
The answer came at last. After some friends 
had prayed with him in his chamber on one 
occasion, he asked to be left alone for a few 
minutes. They withdrew, leaving the dying 



62 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



man alone with God. As he prayed the clouds 
parted; the light of Irnmanuel's face beamed 
upon his vision again. "/?e is come! he is 
come! my beloved is mine, and I am his— his 
forever!'' he exclaimed in holy rapture, and 
was caught up to paradise. 

Irish Methodism is surely destined to be a 
chief agency in bringing back to the pure faith 
of the gospel that brave, warm-hearted, splen- 
didly endowed race; and among the names that 
will give unfading luster to its annals is that 
of the learned, eloquent, seraphic Thomas 
Walsh. 



:c 






^ 




SUSANNA WESLEY. 



SuSaHBa Weglef. 




NCOVER your heads in her pres- 
ence, for she is the gracious 
mother of us all. The millions 
who bear the Methodist name 
bear her impress. She molded 
the man who is molding the nations. Her 
brain and heart and will-power were the orig- 
inal guiding, conserving, and propelling force 
of Methodism. 

In countless homes in many lands her influ- 
ence is felt at this hour, ennobling manhood, 
making womanhood sweeter, and blessing child- 
hood with the instruction and inspiration of the 
wisdom, the faith, the firmness, and the self- 
abnegation that were exhibited in that parson- 
age at Ep worth, where the valiant, unworldly, 
and unthrifty Samuel Wesley made his ser- 
mons and wrote his verses, and where she gave 
the world an immortal example of what a wom- 
an can do in her home to glorify God and 
bless mankind. With such a wife and mother 
in every Christian home, the militant CUtrcli 
would have nothing to do but to marshal its 

(58) 



54 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



forces, and lead them at once to tlie conquest 
of the world. Her family discipline typed the 
methods of the millions whose tread is shak- 
ing the earth. 

Her intellect was swift, keen, and strong. 
She saw quicker and farther than ordinary 
persons. In the great crises in the career of 
her illustrious son her intuition was ahead of 
his judgment. She pointed him to the paths 
providentially opened. It was her firm yet 
loving hand that held him steady when, bewil- 
dered or disheartened, he might have wavered. 
To her the student in college, the perplexed 
yoang theologue, the anxious penitent, the 
leader in a movement not foreseen by himself, 
nor devised by any human wisdom, turned for 
sympathy, for counsel, and for prayer. Her 
acquaintance with the Scriptures enabled her 
always to give him the word in season; while 
her mighty faith kindled and fed the flame that 
burned in his soul. Her responsive spirit rec- 
ognized the Divine hand in the strange and 
stirring events of that momentous time. She 
was thoroughly educated, having a knowledge 
of Greek, Latin, and French, and being widely 
reaAin theology, polemics, and general litera- 
ture. Her mind moved on the same plane with 
those of her sons; and the sympathy that flowed 



SUSANNA WESLEY. 55 



to them from her motherly heart was intelli- 
gent, and therefore helpful as well as comfort- 
ing. 

She was beautiful in person. Physical beau- 
ty does not compensate for the lack of the 
higher qualities that ennoble and adorn wom- 
anhood, but it invests its fortunate possessor 
vt^ith an added charm and potency for good. 
The little touch of imperiousness that was in 
her temper was condoned the more readily by 
all concerned because it was the self-assertion 
of a woman whose strong intellect was reen- 
forced by the magical power of a sweet voice 
and personal beauty. Such women — the most 
divinely tuned of them, at least — bloom in ever 
increasing sweetness and loveliness in the at- 
mosphere they make around themselves. 

There was a deeper spring of power in her 
life than either her intellect or her beauty. It 
was her piety. She took an hour every morn- 
ing and every evening for private meditation 
and prayer. She did not find time for this — 
she was the mother of thirteen living children 
— she took time for it. And herein is the se- 
cret of the power that raised her above the 
level of her contemporaries, and gave unity, 
vigor, and success to her life. The two hours 
thus spent were taken from the home-school 



56 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



which she taught, from the domestic duties 
that waited for her ready hands, and from 
the parochial service expected from her. But 
it was there in the place of secret prayer that 
her soul was replenished with the spiritual life 
that was so helpful to other lives; it was there 
that she acquired the patience, the self-com- 
mand, and the moral power that made her a 
priestess at the home altar, and qualified her 
to rule that sacred kingdom with Avisdom, firm- 
ness, and love. The light kindled within her 
own soul during these two hours spent daily 
with God lighted all that were in the house. 
In that quiet chamber at Epworth, kneeling at 
the feet of God, the prayers of John Wesley's 
mother opened the channel for the Pentecostal 
floods that were to flow over the earth in these 
latter days. 

That is the picture — a gentle yet queenly 
presence; a face delicate and classically regu- 
lar in its features; an eye that had the flash of 
fire and the tenderness of the great motherly 
heart; the noble head gracefully posed; all suf- 
fused with the indefinable influence that makes 
a holy woman radiant with unearthly beauty 
— Susanna Wesley, the mother of Methodism, 
who will live in its heart forever. 




RICHARD WATSON. 



RishaFd WafeSsn. 




ENTALLY lie was a paradox and 
a phenomenon. Precocity of de- 
velopment and sustained power 
were wonderfully exhibited in his 
career. He began to preach at 
the age of fifteen; but in this particular he 
presents a warning rather than an example. 
His frail body was an inadequate instrument 
of his mighty intellect. Great as were his in- 
tellectual achievements, the sum of his labors 
would have been enhanced, even if their qual- 
ity had not been improved, had his physical 
been proportioned to his mental power. All 
his life he was a sufferer from physical pain 
and debility, presenting a perpetual contrast 
in the feebleness of his wasted frame and the 
majesty of his mind. 

His natural fondness for metaphysics and 
his interest in the Calvinistic controversy led 
him to hear a Methodist preacher, whose Ar- 
minianism, he hoped, would f arnish him argu- 
ments to be used in" the discussion of the Five 
Points. Fortunately for him that Methodist 

(57) 



58 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



preacher was not a dealer in metaphysical ab- 
stractions and irrelevancies. The young dis- 
putant left the house a conyicted, penitent sin- 
ner, and went home not to argue but to pray 
with a broken heart. In a few days, after a 
bitter struggle, he found the peace of God. 
The blessing came with such power that its 
remembrance was vivid and precious to him to 
his dying-day. It was a clear conversion— a 
fact of special significance in the experience 
of a man destined to be the teacher of teach- 
ers in the things of God. 

On his fifteenth birthday his first sermon 
was preached in a private house at Boothby. 
The youthful preacher did not escape the tri- 
als that usually beset Methodist preachers at 
that time. On his return home at night his 
soiled and torn garments often attested the 
rough handling he had received from the mob 
during the day. But, nothing daunted, he 
went forth preaching and praying among the 
poor and the outcast. ' Soon his extraordinary 
gifts attracted special attention, and the same 
year he was recommended to the Conference 
■ — the youngest candidate ever received by it. 
We are told, however, that he was " a mature 
young man " — tall, sedate; and with strongly 
marked intellectuality of appearance. 



RICHARD WATSON. 59 



His rise was rapid, though his youthful mod- 
esty caused him no little embarrassment at 
times. He preached almost every day, but 
somehow found time to study the Greek and 
Hebrew languages, and to make vast acqui- 
sitions in systematic theology. He took the 
rough traveling, coarse fare, and other priva- 
tions of the work without flinching, and de- 
lighted in the companionship of his fellow- 
itinerants. 

Unjustly accused of heresy, he hastily and 
imprudently retired from his work, and en- 
gaged in secular affairs. He did not prosper 
in business — the Master had other work for 
him to do. And so, after an interregnum 
which he always regretted, he returned to the 
Wesley an Conference — a wiser man. There- 
after his course was without a break, and his 
usefulness and fame widened continually. 

He was profoundly impressed with the prov- 
idential mission of Methodism, and his soul 
was thrilled with the contemplation of its pos- 
sibilities as a system of Christian evangeliza- 
tion. He was fired with the missionary idea, 
and became a chief agent in organizing the 
work which had been begun by Coke, but 
which, at his death, had languished for lack 
of leadership. His great sermon in CityEoad 



60 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Chapel in 1816 from the text, " He must reign 
till he hath put all enemies under his feet," 
made an epoch in his own life, and in the work 
of missions among Methodists. In 1821 he 
was made resident Missionary Secretary, and 
by tongue and pen he gave the cause an im- 
pulse that was felt in all parts of the British 
kingdom, and which has not ceased to be felt 
unto this day. 

He was a master in the pulpit. Grandeur 
of thought was combined with good taste, deep 
solemnity, and extraordinary divine unction. 
He had little action in delivery; his power was 
in his thought and in the attesting Spirit of God. 
At times he reached the sublimest heights of 
eloquence, "soaring," said Kobert Hall, "into 
regions of thought where no genius but his 
own can penetrate." A contemporaneous writer 
says of his preaching: "Often did he pour 
forth the stores of his mighty and well-fur- 
nished intellect, so that he appeared to his 
hearers scarcely an inhabitant of this world; 
he led them unto regions of thought of which 
they had previously no conception, and his 
tall and graceful form, his pallid countenance, 
bearing marks of deep thought and of severe 
pain, and at the same time beaming with be- 
nignity and holy delight, served to deepen the 



RICHARD WATSON. 61 



impression of his incomparable discourses. 
He could soar to the loftiest heights appar- 
ently without any effort. The greatest charm 
of his preaching was its richness in evangel- 
ical truth and in devotional feeling; and in 
these admirable qualities — the soul of all good 
preaching — it increased to the last." 

His greatest service to the Church was as a 
writer, for he is its greatest theologian. His 
" Theological Institutes " makes a body of di- 
vinity recognized as a standard throughout the 
Methodist world. Dr. J. W. Alexander, of 
Princeton College, compares him to Turretini, 
saying: "Making due allowance for the differ- 
ence of age, Watson, the Methodist, is the only 
systematizer, within my knowledge, who ap- 
proaches the same eminence; of whom I use 
Addison's words — ' He reasons like Paley, and 
descants like Hall.' " This work has educated 
two generations of Methodist preachers, and 
though not faultless, it is a scientific statement 
of Methodistic theology by a man providen- 
tially endowed and equipped for the task — a 
man whose vigor of thought, candor, philo- 
sophic comprehensiveness, and poetic fire have 
won for him a position of unchallenged su- 
premacy in his own Church, and the admira- 
tion of the best minds in other Churches. His 



62 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



"Biblical Dictionary," " Catecliisms/' "Con- 
versations for the Young," "Life of Wesley," 
" Sermons," and other works, have been highly 
prized. 

He too came when he was needed— a legis- 
lator who took Tip the work of rearing the or- 
ganic frame of Methodism where Wesley left 
it; a writer who crystallized its doctrines in 
imperishable forms ; a preacher whose sublim- 
ity of thought was equaled by the sanctity of 
his life; a consecrated and divinely endowed 
laborer who, to use his own language, did his 
part "to hasten on that result which shall 
stamp the seal of eternal truth upon every jot 
and tittle of the sacred volume; to brighten 
the splendor of the prophetic page into still 
more glorious history, and to fulfill ' that mys- 
tery of God,' that consummation over which 
earth with all her tongues, and heaven with all 
her choirs beatified, shall roll the triumphant 
notes and the lofty swell of the final anthem: 
'Halleluiah; for the Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth.' " 






IS individuality typed liis race. 
He was a typical Irishman and 
a typical Irish Methodist — brave 
as a lion, bubbling over with wit, 
and with the magic gift of elo- 
quence. He was a wild youth, possessing ex- 
traordinary physical strength; a leader in ath- 
letic sports, a dashing rider; at home at horse- 
races, weddings, and wakes, ready to bet, drink, 
or fight. Yet from his childhood he had felt 
deep religious impressions, and, like many oth- 
ers destined to large usefulness, he seems to 
have had early premonitions of his high call- 
ing of God. A godly mother taught him to 
pray, and to read the Bible and other good 
books. He married very young, and with his 
girl-wife he set up housekeeping, but did not 
make much change in his way of living. In 
a drinking bout he was shot in the face and 
neck, and lost one of his eyes. This event 
sobered him for awhile, but he relapsed into 
his former courses, and even his devoted wife 
gave up all hope that he would reform. 

(133) 



64 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



In 1789 the Methodists came to Dunmore, 
where he lived. He went to hear them, and 
went away feeling that he was a lost sinner. 
His conviction was deep and his anguish of 
soul intense. The old Adam in him was strong, 
and evil habit held him fast. After a desper- 
ate struggle, one day he fell on his knees alone 
in his house, and cried, "O God, I will sub- 
mit!" Soon afterward, under the instruction 
of the Methodists, whose meetings he now reg- 
ularly attended, and with the help of their 
prayers, he broke through all difficulties, and 
one Sunday morning, in May, 1791, he was 
born of God. It was a powerful conversion. 
It was a glad memory to him through life. 
He could not contain the mighty joy that 
flooded his soul. The hand of the Lord was 
upon him. He felt that he must tell the per- 
ishing masses around what a Saviour he had 
found. 

He was of good blood, coming of a family 
distinguished in arms, statesmanship, and let- 
ters. Being the eldest son, rarely gifted, and 
classically educated, he might have hoped to 
achieve distinction in any line of secular am- 
bition ; but the word of the Lord was as a fire 
in his bones. Breaking over all the conven- 
tionalities attached to his social position, re- 



GIDEON OUSELEY. 65 



nouncing fully and gladly all worldly ambi- 
tion, and counting all things but loss that lie 
might Avin Christ, he was soon going from 
town to town a flaming evangelist, exciting the 
wonder of the people, and moving them with 
a strange power. This is his own way of tell- 
ing how he was called to preach: 

" The voice said, ' Gideon, go and preach the 
gospel.' 

*' ' How can I go? ' says I; ' O Lord, I cannot 
speak, for I am a child.' 

" ' Do you not know the disease ? ' 

" ' O yes. Lord, I do,' says I. 

" 'And do you not know the cure ? ' 

"'Indeed I do, glory be to thy holy name!' 
says I. 

"'Go, then, and tell them these two things 
— the disease and the cure. All the rest is 
nothing but talk.' " 

For forty years he lived to tell of the dis- 
ease and the cure. It was a ministry of mar- 
velous power and success. He preached in 
the Irish tongue as well as in the English. 
The wondering multitudes wept or swore and 
raved at him as the mood moved them. To 
the simple and plaintive Irish airs he would 
sing the Methodist hymns, the tender-hearted 
people swaying and sobbing as they listened. 



66 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



His pulpit was in the saddle. On market-days 
and other occasions that drew the people to- 
gether he would ride into the midst of a crowd, 
start a hymn or begin an exhortation, and with 
a voice of remarkable clearness and power 
would make himself heard above all the noises 
of carts, cattle, pigs, poultry, and the bowlings 
of the mob. Extraordinary power attended 
his word. His method was direct — he showed 
that there was but one Saviour, and one way 
of salvation by him. Sinners were cut to the 
heart, and great numbers were brought to 
Christ. Wherever he went the flame kindled 
and spread, both among Eomanists and Prot- 
estants. It tested all his wit to control the 
mixed multitude that heard him; but his tact 
was equal to all occasions. The mob that could 
not be convinced by argument was conciliated 
by his good humor, or captured by a stroke of 
ready wit. His Irish heart knew the way to 
their hearts, and when once he got hold of 
theni he led them by a straight line to the Sav- 
iour of sinners. He and his companions went 
through nearly all the northern half of Ire- 
land, "storming the little towns as they rode 
along." The conversions were many and clear, 
and the converts were often so demonstrative 
as to make a great stir in both friendly and 



GIDEON OUSELEY. 67 



hostile circles. Scenes of indescribable excite- 
ment attended his preaching — some weeping, 
some shouting defiance and curses, some throw- 
ing stones, some ready to attack and others 
to defend him, brandishing shillalahs, and 
breaking each other's heads, until the po- 
lice or a platoon of soldiers came and put an 
end to the riot. His soldier-blood was quick- 
ened in his veins, and his fearless heart beat 
high amid such scenes, and he was always able 
to ride the storm he had raised. If there is 
one quality that wins an Irishman's admira- 
tion, it is courage— it touches a chord in the 
hearts of a race that is the mother of heroes. 
There was a generous and princely element in 
his nature that showed itself in dealing with 
the most violent opposers. There was more 
than this — a mighty faith in God and a Christ- 
liness of spirit that went beyond nature in its 
reach and power. 

He was preeminently the apostle of Irish 
Methodism. The leaven he infused into the 
thought and life of Ireland is still working. 
Of the tens of thousands of Irish Methodists 
who have come hither to enrich American 
* Methodism with their fervor and eloquence, 
many were directly converted under his min- 
try, and all were his debtors. 



68 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



To the last be was active, preaching, when 
he was seventy-four years old, fourteen, six- 
teen, and sometimes twenty sermons a week. 
Loved and venerated by all classes, he died in 
Dublin in 1839, the Centennial year of British 
Methodism. "I have no fear of death!" he 
exclaimed with his dying-breath, and the brave, 
generous, glowing heart ceased to beat, and his 
immortal spirit was taken up to be with his 
Lord. 





William Bpamwell. 

E have here a man of steel; but it 
was steel incandescent with holy 
fires burning within. As a sol- 
dier, he would have done all that 
was possible to unflinching cour- 
age, unyielding discipline, and untiring energy. 
He was a revivalist — not of the effusive, sur- 
face-touching type, but one who wielded the 
sword of the Spirit unsheathed and keen-edged. 
He was a man of prayer, and a man of work 
— a man who had his moods, ecstasies, and 
dreams, and yet was a man of rare good sense 
and practical wisdom. With a bodily consti- 
tution iron-like in strength and endurance, and 
a prophet-like fearlessness and plainness of 
speech, he had a tenderness of heart that pit- 
ied all human suffering, and sympathized with 
all human sorrow. Among the men of his 
time his figure stands like a bronze statue, 
warrior-like in its martial pose and sinewy 
vigor, and with a saintly halo encircling the 
brow. He was a saint, but a saint of the true 
Church militant, whose place was not in the 



70 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



cloister, but in the midst of the battle where 
hostile banners waved, and where there was a 
clash of steel and the shout of victory. 

He was born in Lancashire in 1759 of relig- 
ious parents, who gave him Christian training 
after their kind. At an early age he evinced 
the qualities and tendencies that foreshad- 
owed his career. The Head of the Church 
calls men to do the work they are fitted to do. 
When God inspires a man it is because there 
is a man to inspire. 

His birth into the new life was preceded by 
great searchings of heart and bitter struggles. 
He practiced self-tortures, fastings, solitary 
wanderings in the woods, and kept midnight 
vigils kneeling on his bare knees on the sanded 
floor. While partaking of the Lord's Supper 
in the village church at Preston he got a 
glimpse of heavenly light, and was comforted. 
He had strong prejudices against the Method- 
ists, but was persuaded to hear one of their 
preachers. He got the right word, and at the 
next meeting he joined them. But he Avas 
still unsatisfied, having not yet a clear assur- 
ance of his acceptance with God. John Wes- 
ley came to Preston. " Dear brother," he said, 
taking the hand of the young man, and look- 
ing into his face, " can you praise God? " "No, 



WILLIAM BRAMWELL 71 



sir," was the answer. " Well, perhaps you can 
to-night," said Wesley, with a kindly smile. 
That night, while Wesley was preaching, the 
blessing came— and it came to stay. He never 
lost the light and peace that then filled his glad 
heart. His movement was right onward, with- 
out a perceptible break or conscious reaction 
— a fact to be pondered by the devout reader. 
The light of life enkindled within him shone 
more and more to the perfect day. The new 
birth, continuous progress, perfect love, end- 
less growth — all by faith — this was his expe- 
rience. "Never imagine," lie says, "that you 
have arrived at the summit. See God in all 
things, and you will see no end." His preach- 
ing was always on this line. He preached a 
present and full salvation — sin destroyed, 
grace abounding, love reigning. With his 
soul aflame, his lips touched with the live 
coal from the altar, he called his hearers to 
come and kindle their lamps where his own 
had been lighted. Having drunk deeply from 
the fountain, he called on them to come and 
take of the water of life freely. And the Lord 
was with him in wondrous power. Great 
things were wrought by him in the name of 
Jesus. During his first year on the Shefiield 
Circuit twelve hundred and fifty souls were 



72 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



added to the Church. Under his ministry 
these sonls were brought in through the strait 
gate, and were then told to go on unto perfec- 
tion, he as a faithful shepherd leading his 
flock. Similar gracious and glorious results 
attended his ministry year after year; his path 
from circuit to circuit was a line of light, and 
a succession of evangelical triumphs. 

He was instant and mighty in prayer, and 
went from house to house as a messenger of 
God. His visits were short, and he had the 
holy tact that improved every moment for re- 
ligious edification. Frequently, says one who 
knew him well, "so powerfully did he wrestle 
with God that the room seemed filled with the 
divine glory." He prayed much in secret, and 
when he went among the people it was evident 
to all that he had been with Jesus. In the 
holy of holies, the place of secret prayer, he 
had gazed upon the shekinah, the symbol of 
the excellent glory, and he came forth trans- 
figured by the heavenly illumination. He was 
a man of God, breathing the air of the super- 
natural, and exercising a ministiy supernatural 
in its spirit and in its results. But he was no 
fanatic; he did not expect the ends he sought 
without the use of the means. The main dif- 
ference between him and others is that in his 



WILLIAM BRAMWELL. 73 



ministry lie put prayer where God puts it — ■ 
first and mightiest of all the forces which a 
mortal may wield in promoting the divine glory 
in the salvation of men. Strange accounts are 
given of special answers to his prayers, of his 
discernment of spirits, of his presentiments of 
things to come. Divinely touched, and fi.nely 
tuned, this strong and healthy man was respon- 
sive to voices not heard by the common ear, 
and saw what was hidden from the dull eyes 
of unbelief. Yet there was no miracle — ex- 
cept as all manifestations of spiritual power 
above the common level are miraculous in the 
sense that God manifests himself to his own 
as he does not unto the world. 

He was a fearless preacher, declaring the 
whole counsel of God, making no compromise 
with error or sin. On one occasion, in the 
midst of peculiar ti^als in one of his charges, 
he writes to a friend: "I must in a few weeks, 
if spared, strike home, and leave the whole to 
God. I see hell will rise, but our God is al- 
mighty." 

He gave himself wholly to the functions of 
his sacred office. He was never unemployed, 
or triflingly employed. Else early, pray, read, 
pray, was his constant exliortation, enforced by 
his constant practice. He gave only six hours 



74 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



to sleep, and devoted all the rest to study, wor- 
ship, or work for Christ. 

On the 13th of August, 1818, when he was 
fresh from his knees in prayer, the chariot of 
fire came down, and he stepped into it, and 
was borne to the world of perfection for which 
he longed. 

Nearly six feet high, strong-framed, large- 
featured, with an eye "piercing as an eagle's," 
and that indefinable something about him that 
in the holiest men at once awes and attracts 
the beholder — that is William Bramwell, the 
burning evangelist, the strict disciplinarian, 
the unresting worker, the exponent and exem- 
plar of Christian purity, the good soldier of 
Jesus Christ, who so powerfully impressed his 
contemporaries, and will be felt in the influ- 
ence of his consecrated life as long as Meth- 
odism shall live, and goodness be honored on 
earth. 







II I' ' 

COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON. 




HE had lier place and her woiji 
from God, and her serene and 
stately figure will always stand 
in the foreground of the picture 
of early Methodism. The wife 
of an earl, with a strain of royal blood in her 
veins, it was her glory that she was a humble 
follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Possess- 
ing a large fortune, she laid it all at his feet, 
joyfully giving all to him who gave himself for 
her. -Having high social position and influ- 
ence, she laid this also a willing offering upon 
the altar of Christian consecration. Through 
her the overture was made to the titled class 
of the British kingdom to join in the move- 
ment that was to rescue the nation from athe- 
ism, and check the tide of its moral degener- 
acy. If too few of them responded directly to 
the movement and became personal benefici- 
aries of saving grace, she made a channel 
through which their whole body was reached 
by an influence that awed, chastened, and in a 
measure disarmed their hostility. 

(75) 



76 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 

When in the heat of polemics Wesley and 
Whitefield were being driven apart, it was her 
gentle, womanly hand that drew them together 
again and prevented a rupture of their per- 
sonal relations that not only might have left a 
blur on the record of their lives, but hindered 
the great work that was equally dear to them 
both. Her Calvinistic opinions enabled her 
to carry the torch of evangelical reformation 
and kindle its heavenly light where it could 
not have gone without her. The separate 
movement which she promoted effected its 
providential purpose. The mountains and val- 
leys of Wales sing for joy, and the stream of 
spiritual life flows in a stronger and swifter 
current in many lands because she put her 
faith, her love, her prayer, her work, and her 
money into the Master's cause when she heard 
his call and saw her gracious opportunity. 
Noble Christian lady! faithful stewardess of 
her Lord! she shines apart in the firmament 
of Methodist history like the evening star 
whose mild radiance is the precursor of count- 
less lesser lights that spangle the heavens. 

A severe sickness first caused her to turn her 
thoughts to religion, and prepared her heart 
for the reception of the seed of the kingdom 
that was dropped into it by her kinswoman, 



COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON. 77 



Lady Bettie Hastings, who had come in con- 
tact with the Methodists at Oxford. She found 
in Methodism that which met her spiritual 
needs, and soon she identified herself with the 
great movement. She invited Mr. Wesley to 
her residence, where he preached to a class of 
noble hearers to whom the gospel as he pre- 
sented it was a new and strange thing. She 
accepted his doctrine of Christian perfection 
— "the doctrine I hope to live and die by," | 

she wrote to him. She appointed Whitefield j 

one of Iter chaplains, and the great orator 
preached with characteristic power to the aris- 
tocratic circle that gathered at her invitation. 
Among them was the keen and courtly Ches- 
terfield, the witty and sardonic Walpole, the 
critical and caviling Hume, the saucy and sub- 
tle Bolingbroke, and many other sinners of 
high rank, who listened with wonder and ad- 
miration to an eloquence that surpassed all 
their conceptions. Many of them were con- 
verted — notably Lord St. John, the brother of 
Bolingbroke, and a goodly number of noble 
women. A select number of these established 
a meeting for Bible-reading and prayer, held 
at each other's houses — a sort of class-meet- 
ing^the spontaneous product then, as at other 
times, of true New Testament Christianity. 



'8 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



This meeting was for many years a center of 
spiritual power, these devout women leading 
lives of singular fidelity and holy beauty in 
the midst of the vain pomp and glory of the 
aristocratic world. 

She gave away more than half a million of 
dollars for religious uses. She sold her jew- 
els, gave up her costly equipage, expensive 
residence, and liveried servants, and with the 
money thus obtained she bought theaters, 
halls, and other buildings, and fitted up places 
of worship for the poor. She made itinerant 
excursions into different parts of England and 
Wales, accompanied by zealous noblewomen 
and by evangelists, who preached as they went 
in the churches or in the open air. To sys- 
tematize the work, she mapped all England in- 
to six circuits, and supplied them with preach- 
ers at her own expense. But her munificence 
provided houses of worship more rapidly than 
preachers could be found to preach in them, 
so at Trevecca, in Wales, a college for the 
preparation of candidates for the ministry was 
opened under her patronage. John Fletcher 
was its first president, and Joseph Benson its 
head-master. Its history reads strikingly like 
that of most schools of its class that have since 
risen, flourished for a season, and perished; 



COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON. 79 



but it was a fruitful investment for the glory 
of God made by a woman who, though herself 
never the occupant of a pulpit, was the instru- 
ment by whom the glad tidings of the gospel 
was preached to a great multitude of souls, 
and many turned to righteousness. To her the 
promise will not fail — she will shine as the 
stars forever. Among those who coiiperated 
with her in carrying out her plans were Ro- 
maine, Venn, Madan, Townsend, Berridge, Top- 
lady, Shirley, Fletcher, Benson, and others, 
whose names will not perish from the pages 
that record the great evangelical revival. 

In 1791 she passed to her reward on high in 
her eighty-fourth year. Her departure was 
not merely peaceful, it was rapturous. When 
the breaking of a blood-vessel apprised her 
that the end was at hand, she said; "I am 
well; all is well — well forever. I see where- 
ever I turn my eyes, whether I live or die, 
nothing but victory. The coming of the Lord 
draweth nigh, the coming of the Lord draweth 
nigh! The thought fills my soul with joy un- 
speakable. My soul is filled with glory. I am 
in the element of heaven itself. I am encir- 
cled in the arms of love and mercy; I long to 
be at home, O I long to be at home!" And 
thus she went home. 



80 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Strong-framed, and erect in her carriage, 
with a face in which masculine vigor was 
blended with feminine softness and saintly 
sweetness of expression; a chin square and 
massive enough to indicate the tenacity w^hich 
distinguished her; lips that seemed ready to 
speak in benedictions; a nose rather large for 
the Grecian model of beauty; great "speak- 
ing" eyes, from whose depths her great soul 
looked forth upon the world in pitying love; a 
forehead broad and smooth, above which the 
abundant hair was gathered under a snowy cap 
of chaste ornamentation — this is the portrait- 
ure that has come down to us of Selina, Count- 
ess of Huntingdon, w^hose illustrious example 
of the entire consecration of rank and riches, 
love and life, to Christ, will be an inspiration 
to her sex until, in the fulfillment of the joy- 
ous promise, a redeemed humanity shall join 
in the jubilee-songs of the millennial morning. 







WILLIAM CARVOSSO. 



William GaF'^^^g^s 




T was a marvelous time. All 
England was thrilling with relig- 
ious excitement; responsive souls 
kindled everywhere at the elec- 
tric touch of the agents employed 
in the work of grace. It was a day of God's 
power, and the people were willing. Wesley 
came to Cornwall, and left it in a blaze. The 
humble Carvosso family were soon swept into 
the current of the great revival. The first to 
be converted was a sister of the subject of this 
sketch. She came twelve miles to tell the glad 
news to them that were at home, exhibiting the 
true instinct of a renewed soul rejoicing in the 
love of God. Entering the house one Sunday 
morning, he found her on her knees praying 
with his mother and sister. He was deeply 
affected by the scene, and soon we hear of him 
at a Methodist meeting listening to a Method- 
ist preacher. " The word quickly reached my 
heart," he says. He had a genius for religion, 
though his life had hitherto been sinful; and 
the truth he heard from the plain but faithful 
6 (81) 



82 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



preacher was good seed that fell on good 
ground. The sword o£ the Spirit cut to the 
quick, and his heart quivered with the keenest 
penitential pain. The thought was presented 
to his mind that his day of grace was past, and 
it filled him with alarm. But he tells us that 
he was enabled to set this aside as a tempta- 
tion from the devil, and that he determined 
that, whether saved or lost, he would never 
cease to seek the mercy of God. "The very 
moment I formed this resolution in my heart 
Christ appeared to me, and God pardoned all 
my sins and set my soul at liberty. It was 
about nine o'clock at night. May 7, 1771 — and 
never shall I forget that happy hour." 

Not long afterward he tells us that by faith 
he received the full witness of the Spirit that 
the blood of Jesus Christ cleansed him from 
all sin. He testified to the cleansing and keep- 
ing power of his Saviour until death, and his 
holy and fruitful life attested the verity of his 
testimony. His experience was in the sun-lit 
sphere of certainty. He believed and he 
spoke; what he had seen and felt with confi- 
dence he told. The record of his life is as 
refreshing to the believing heart as the dew to 
the grass and flowers. It exhibits a wisdom 
that was from above; a faith that was invinci- 



WILLIAM CARVOSSO. 83 



ble within the limits of scriptural possibili- 
ties ; a spiritual insight that was truly wonder- 
ful; and a Christ-like love that melted and 
won the hearts of many that will be his crown 
of rejoicing in the day of Jesus Christ. There 
was in this unlettered man — he only learned 
to write Avhen in his sixty-fifth year — a balance 
of faculties suitable to an instrument chosen 
of God, and a power that was manifestly the 
power of God. His thought and life may 
seem to have flowed within narrow banks, 
but he knew the Bible, he knew Jesus as a 
personal Saviour, and he knew human nature. 
His one Book was broader than all other 
books; his one Object of adoring love was the 
highest in the universe; and the human nature 
that he knew so well was an inexhaustible 
study for an acute intellect and a soul so quick 
and clear in its intuitions. 

His call was to the class-leadership. " I am 
a teacher," he said, "but not a preacher — that 
is a work to which God has not called me." 
If, as has sometimes happened, any of his 
brethren called him to the pulpit, happily for 
him and for the Church he did not heed their 
calls, but kept to the work that was given him 
to do by his Lord. 

At Gluvias, near Ponsanooth, he was ap- 



84 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



pointed leader of a little band of Methodists 
who were poor as well as few in number. Soon 
"the barren wilderness began to smile," he 
tells us; souls were converted — among them, 
all of his own children. Two large classes de- 
manded his care, and a new chapel was built 
mainly by his liberality and labor. Faithful 
in the use of his one talent, this consecrated 
Cornwall class-leader was an illustration of the 
operation of the law of reproduction and in- 
definite multiplication of the fruits of a true 
Christian life. - 

By industry and good management he se- 
cured a modest competency. With this he was 
satisfied, and, to ase his own expression, he 
"retired from the world," giving all the re- 
maining years of his long life wholly to the 
service of the Church. His labors were abun- 
dant and successful, and his joy was full: "My 
peace," he says, "has flowed as a river, and 
^y joys have abounded like Jordan's swelling 
streams." He was the leader of three classes, 
whose members made rapid and steady growth 
in grace and knowledge under his wise, loving, 
and faithful guidance. From circuit to circuit 
he journeyed, infusing new life into the feeble, 
and inspiring new hope into the desponding 
churches. He was everywhere welcomed by 



WILLIAM CARVOSSO. 



the preachers, and greeted with reverent af- 
fection by the people. 

But it was perhaps in visiting from house 
to house that his peculiar gifts were called 
into fullest exercise, and the richest results of 
his labors realized. He was the apostle of the 
household, the angel of the sick-chamber and 
death-bed, the consoler of sorrow, the guide of 
the perplexed soul, the counselor and exemplar 
of a great company of persons who regarded 
him as the messenger of God, and who aspired 
to follow him as he followed Christ. He had 
the rare gift of saying the right w^ord at the 
right time. The clouds of spiritual darkness 
were dispelled, sick-chambers were brightened 
with heavenly light, and dying-pillows made 
easy when he came and talked and prayed. 
He was full of faith and the Holy Ghost. The 
letter of the word of God seemed to be vital- 
ized and was clothed with a peculiar energy 
as it fell from the lips of this simple, loving 
old class-leader. A single remark from him 
in passing on the highway has been known 
to lodge an arrow of conviction in a sinner's 
heart, and a single prayer bring such an an- 
swer as to fill the burdened soul with the peace 
of God. As we follow him in his rounds, we 
feel the throb and thrill of New Testament 



86 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



life and power. There was a tinge of poetry 
in liis soul — a poetic fire that blended with his 
spiritual fervor and intensified it. He had 
gotten by heart many of Charles Wesley's 
burning and melodious lyrics, and his use of 
them was singularly ready and felicitous. By 
an apt passage of Scripture he would flash 
light upon the inquiring mind; and then at the 
happy moment he would, by repeating a well- 
chosen stanza, touch the sensibilities in such 
a way as to make the sin-sick, burdened heart 
receptive of help and healing from the Great 
Physician. But we miss the secret of his 
power if we look no farther nor deeper than 
this. It was not merely that he had stored 
his mind with the letters of the Sacred Text, 
and that the words came promptly at his call; 
it was not merely that he had naturally a sym- 
pathetic heart, a magnetic presence, and a voice 
that strangely thrilled the hearer. Behind all 
these natural gifts, if they may be so called, 
was that greatest gift — a mighty faith in God, 
the living God. All that God promised he 
claimed. He took him at his word. The won- 
ders wrought by him were the victories of 
faith — wonders that might w-ell give him a 
place among the illustrious saints whose names 
make the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to 



WILLIAM CARVOSSO. 87 



the Hebrews a gallery of divinely painted 
pictures warm with the colors of life, and 
bright with the reflected glory of the Snn of 
righteousness. 

He died in 1834, in the eighty-fifth year of 
his age, and in the sixty-fourth of his Chris- 
tian service. His faith was undimmed to the 
last moment. The day before his death he 
said: "I have this morning been looking about 
for my sins, but I cannot find any of them^ 
they are all gone." With an indescribable ex- 
pression of joy and triumph in his counte- 
nance, he repeated the line, "Praise God, from 
whom all blessings flow," and with his dying- 
breath essayed to raise the tune — and then fell 
asleep in Jesus, to awake and be satisfied with 
his likeness, and to resume the theme in a 
nobler, sweeter song in glory. 

A portly, rounded form, neatly and plainly 
clad in old Methodist style, complexion rosy 
and smooth, irregular features, missing every 
line of beauty yet beaming with simple good- 
ness; heavy lips that seemed ready to pro- 
nounce a blessing; a nose that curves almost 
into a semi-circle ; eyes small, bright, and kind- 
ly; forehead receding; head small and adorned 
with thin white hair; his whole presence en- 
veloped in an atmosphere of fatherliness and 



88 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



gentleness — William Carvosso stands before 
us the typical class-leader, the patriarchal lay- 
man, the unordained but Grod-commissioned 
apostle, whose holy life furnishes indubita- 
ble proof that in these later times the victo- 
ries of faith may be as signal as in the first 
days when, the light of the gospel morning was 
breaking upon the world. 





Jsgeph BengsB. 

••o<>o- 

ESTINED to be a preacher and a 
scholar, his bent was irrepressi- 
ble. He gravitated to Kingswood 
School, to Trevecca College, and 
to the pulpit, by the force of a 
tendency which was providential, not acci- 
dental. The adjustment of means to ends, of 
agents to the work to be done in the Church, 
is of God. 

He was tenacious of his opinions, conserva- 
tive in every fiber of his mental constitution. 
AVesleyan theology was accepted by him with- 
out any mental reservations, and he was dis- 
posed to insist that all others called by the 
Methodist name should do likewise. With re- 
gard to all questions of Church polity, he was 
content with what had w^orked well, and op- 
posed all changes proposed with the hope of 
doing better. 

Frail of body, he was mighty in intellect — a 
living refutation of the fundamental assump- 
tion of materialism. His mental energy seemed 
almost inexhaustible, and he performed almost 

(S9) 



90 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



incredible labors. At midnight liis study-lamp 
was burning, and at five in the morning it was 
relighted. 

A studious youth and of a sedate and relig- 
ious turn of mind, before he was ten years old 
he was in the habit of praying daily in secret. 
In his sixteenth year he felt consciously the 
regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. He 
had come in contact with the Methodists, and 
he felt drawn to them by spiritual affinity. Be- 
lieving that Methodism offered to him such a 
career of self-sacrificing service to Christ as 
his heart coveted, he went to London to meet 
and confer with Mr. Wesley. The great leader 
saw that this was no common youth, and took 
him to Kingswood and appointed him classical 
teacher. At Oxford he proposed to complete 
his studies; bat his relations with Wesley and 
Lady Huntingdon caused him to be regarded 
with disfavor there. The Bishop of Worces- 
ter refused him ordination, and thus he was 
thrust out to do a work that was ready for his 
willing hands, and he went forth under a high- 
er commission. Soon he received clearer light 
and fuller assurance. " The Lord," he writes, 
"scattered my doubts, and showed me more 
clearly the way of salvation by faith in Christ. 
I was not now anxious to know how I had re- 



JOSEPH BENSON. 91 



solved or not resolved. I had the Lord with 
me in all things; my soul rejoiced in his love, 
and I was continually expecting him to fulfill 
in me all his good pleasure." His life had 
been providentially drawn into its proper cur- 
rent; he knew and felt it to be so, and his 
thankful heart found a heaven on earth in the 
work to which he was called and to which he 
joyfully consecrated his life. 

As a preacher he was richly and variously 
endowed. Possessing largely the critical fac- 
ulty, he was exceptionally able as an expounder 
of the Holy Scriptures, while his declamatory 
powers were such as often made his awe-struck 
hearers feel as if the thunder-peals of the final 
judgment were breaking on their startled ears. 
He was a revivalist. Yast crowds flocked to 
hear him, to whom he preached with such 
power that they were moved to tears, and loud 
cries of anguish w^ere wrung from the hearts 
of sinners pierced by the arrows of conviction. 
As in apostolic times, the word as preached by 
him had free course and was glorified; soals 
were converted while he was speaking, their 
darkness turned into light and their mourning 
into joy. His journeys were evangelical ova- 
tions, great companies of the people turning 
out to meet him and escorting him on his way. 



92 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Tli3 chapels being too small, he preached to 
the assembled thousands in the open air. At 
Gwennap ten thousand men and women stood 
before him at once, and under the divine af- 
flatus he preached with such overwhelming 
effect that the saints wept for joy, and sinners 
wailed aloud in the agonies of penitential pain. 
^In a single month he preached forty sermons 
to sixty thousand hearers. He was a master 
of assemblies, knowing the way to the con- 
sciences of men, and how to pour the oil of 
consolation into their troubled hearts. On one 
occasion, when thronged by a vast multitude 
eager to hear him, he requested all converted 
persons to retire to the outskirts of the crowd, 
so that the unconverted might approach him 
and hear the message of God. No one moved; 
they stood as if spell-bound. "What! all un- 
converted?" he exclaimed. Like an electric 
thrill, the keen conviction of sin ran through 
the multitude, and "conscience- stricken sin- 
ners fell as if slain by these three words." 

His literary labors were abundant and use- 
ful. The work by which he is best known is 
his Biblical Commentary — a work which shows 
the fruits of his extraordinary diligence and 
good judgment as a compiler, and a high order 
of ability as an exegete. It became a standard 



JOSEPH BENSON. 93 



with the "VVesleyan preachers, and still holds 
its place as a valuable contribution to Method- 
ist literature. He was prolific in other lines 
of literary labor — biography, polemics, and the 
editing of the Methodist Magazine and of books. 
The Greek Testament was his special study, 
and his accurate knowledge of its contents, and 
his spiritual insight, made him a master in its 
exposition, a trustworthy guide to such as were 
disposed to dig deep that they might reach 
the hidden treasures in this mine of heavenly 
truth. 

He died in 1821 in his seventy-third year, 
literally worn out in his Master's work. His 
dust sleeps in the City Road Chapel, London. 

A slight, stooping figure plainly attired; a 
grave, thoughtful face; a well-shaped head, 
with a few scattering hairs above the broad 
forehead; a voice feeble and unmusical, with 
a pupit mannerism ungraceful yet singularly 
impressive — Joseph Benson stands in his place, 
a master spirit among the mighty men who made 
Methodism what it is to-day ; and his influence 
will be felt until the last chapter of Methodist 
history shall have been written amid the thick- 
coming wonders and glories of the final con- 
summation. 




HIS transparent, sensitive, fervid 
woman presents a curious psy- 
chological study. She v/as an 
illustrious example of the glori- 
ous work that may be wrought 
in the human soul by the transforming and 
sanctifying grace of God. She burned and 
shined. Having begun the new life, she went 
right on unto perfection. The flame of her de- 
votion shone with a radiance undimmed and 
ever brightening from the moment it was kin- 
dled, at the touch of faith, by the Sun of right- 
eousness. The unclouded mirror of her soul 
reflected the faintest image that was cast upon 
it. She was intensely subjective, and all ex- 
ternal impressions were fused in the furnace 
of her glowing soul and reproduced, bearing 
the stamp of her own individuality. Even in 
sleep she was responsive to touches unfelt by 
natures less delicately strung and tuned. Her 
ardent spirit could not be satisfied until it had 
grasped and held all her gracious Lord offered 
to give. She knew the length, breadth, depth, 
(94) 




HESTER ANN ROGERS. 



HESTER ANN ROGERS. 



95 



and height of the love of Christ. Freely re- 
ceiving, she freely gave. Walking daily with 
God in white, the flowers of paradise bloomed 
along her pathway. 

She was born in 1756. Her father was a 
clergyman of the Chnrch of England, from 
whom she inherited some of the best traits of 
her character. His death, which took place 
when she was nine years old, profoundly af- 
fected her. "I believe," she writes, "I shall 
have reason to bless God forever for the les- 
sons he gave me." Her childhood was one of 
perpetual agitations. She had an intense love 
of pleasure and a peculiarly sensitive con- 
science. Oscillating between worldliness and 
religion, alternately dancing and praying, going 
to church and then to the theater, now reading 
the Bible and then novels and romances, her 
early girlhood was a continued battle in the 
midst of antagonistic influences and tenden- 
cies. The world bid high for this gifted soul ; 
but God asserted his claim to her heart by the 
drawings of his Spirit. Referring to the van- 
ities and mistakes of this period of her life, 
she says: "Yet in all this I was not left with- 
out keen convictions, gentle drawings, and 
many short-lived good resolutions, especially 
till fifteen years of age." She read such books 



96 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



as were accessible to her, some of which were 
helpful and others harmful. She fought a 
long, hard battle against the world and against 
false and superficial views of religion, all the 
time yearning for what was truest and highest, 
and making some progress in the knowledge 
of heavenly things. Under a sermon in the 
parish church on the Sunday before Easter, in 
April, 1774, she was so powerfully affected that 
she wept aloud, to the amazement of those 
around her. She went home, ran up stairs, 
fell on her knees, and made a solemn vow to 
fully renounce all sin. After a sleepless night 
she rose early, took her "finery," high-dressed 
caps, and such like, and ripped them all up, so 
that she could wear them no more; then cut 
her hair short, that it might not be in her 
power to have it dressed, and in the most sol- 
emn manner vowed never to dance again. If 
there was a tinge of morbidness in this, it was 
associated with such a conviction as breaks the 
proud heart and prepares it for the healing 
touch of the Great Physician. 

She had never yet met the Methodists, 
and did not think well of them; but a neigh- 
bor who had found the peace of God among 
them strongly advised her to attend one of 
their meetings. She went privately at five 



HESTER ANN ROGERS. 97 



o'clock in the morning, and took a private seat. 
The preacher was Samuel Bardsley, and his 
text was: "Comfort ye, comfort ye nay people, 
saith your God." "I thought every word was 
for me," she writes. "He spoke to my heart 
as if he had known all the secret workings 
there; and pointed all such sinners as I felt 
myself to be to Jesus crucified." Enlightened 
and comforted, she said: "These are the peo- 
ple of God, and show the way of salvation." 
Henceforth she consorted with the Methodists. 
A storm of persecution followed. Her mother 
threatened to disown her, and but for the in- 
tercessions of a kind uncle would have turned 
her out-of-doors. She was disinherited by 
her god-mother. "This, however," she says, 
"weighed nothing with me, as my language 
was, None but Christ in earth or heaven." 
She proposed to do all the house-work for her 
mother on condition that she might be left free 
to follow her religious inclinations. Thinking 
that, as she had never been used to hard la- 
bor, she would soon weary and give it up, 
her mother consented. "But they knew not 
the power and goodness of that God who had 
strengthened me in all my tribulations," she 
writes. Through these tribulations she was 
led into the light and liberty of the gospel. 



98 .CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



It came at last by an act of faith. Responding 
to the voice which spoke to her inner ear the 
words, "Fear not, only believe," she answered: 
" Lord Jesus, I will ; I do believe ; I now vent- 
ure my whole soul upon thee as God; I put 
my soul into thy hands; thy blood is sufficient; 
I cast my soul upon thee for time and eter- 
nity." In a moment her fetters were broken, 
and her soul felt the full rapture of redeeming 
love. "I was truly a new creature, and seemed 
to be in a new world. I could do nothing but 
love and praise God," she writes. Her labors, 
fastings, and vigils came near destroying her 
life; but deliverance came at last through the 
relentings of her kindred. She was tried, and 
came forth as gold. 

After a long sickness her health returned, 
and soon afterward she tells us that by faith 
she claimed and enjoyed the perfect love of 
God — the love that casteth out all fear. "I 
now walked," she writes, "in the unclouded 
light of his countenance, rejoicing evermore, 
praying without ceasing, and in every thing 
giving thanks. I dwell in Christ, and Christ 
in me. I durst not deny the wonders of his 
love." After this there was a deeper tone and 
an intenser glow in her Christian life. Such 
passages as this, taken from her journal, show 



HESTER ANN ROGERS. 99 



the habitual state of her trusting soul : " I was 
so happy in the night that I had little sleep, 
and awoke several times with these words 
deeply impressed, 'The temple of an indwell- 
ing God.' His love humbles me in the dust; 
it seems as a mirror to discover my nothing- 
ness. Sometimes my weakness of body seems 
quite overpov/ered with the Lord's presence 
manifest to my soul; and I have thought I 
could bear no more and live. But then I eager- 
ly cry, O give me more and let me die! " She 
enjoyed "a heaven of communicated bliss," as 
she herself expresses it. But the fullness of 
her joy did not cause her to forget that she was 
still in the smoke and dust of the battle, fight- 
ing the good fight of faith. "A hypocrite," 
she writes, "may boast he is never tempted — 
has no doubts or fears — but a child of God 
(some rare cases excepted) is seldom long to- 
gether unassaulted by our vigilant adversary." 
In 1784 she was married to James Rogers, a 
worthy and useful Wesleyan preacher, and a 
wider field was opened to her for service in her 
Master's work. For ten years she was his 
helper in successful labors in saving souls and 
edifying the Church. Like a lighted torch 
she carried and kindled the flame of religion 
everywhere she went. She was a class-leader. 



100 CENTENARY, CAMEOS. 



having as many as three of these weekly meet- 
ings, and nearly a hundred souls under her 
charge at one time. Her power in prayer was 
extraordinary — she prayed for instantaneous 
blessings, and answers were given in mighty 
baptisms from on high. In the chamber of 
sickness she was an angel of light. She occa- 
sionally preached. Her manner was quiet, but 
her word was with power. She was known and 
esteemed throughout the Wesleyan Connection 
in the British kingdom, and enjoyed the spe- 
cial friendship of Wesley and Fletcher. She 
was among the group that stood around the 
dying-bed of Wesley, having been a member 
of his household for two years previous. 

Her death was both pathetic and beautiful. 
"After giving birth to her fifth child, she lay 
composed for more than half an hour, with 
heaven in her countenance, praising God for 
his great mercy, and expressing her gratitude 
to all around her. She took her husband's 
hand and said: 'My dear, the Lord has been 
very kind to us; O he is good, he is good; but 
1 11 tell you more by and by.' In a few min- 
utes afterward her whole frame was thrown 
into a state of agitation and agony. After a 
severe struggle for about fifteen minutes, 
bathed with a clammy, cold sweat, she laid 



HESTER ANN ROGERS. 101 



lier head on his bosom, and said, 'I am going.' 
Subduing his alarm, 'Is Jesus precious?' he 
asked. 'Yes, yes; O yes!' she replied. He 
added: 'My dearest love, I know Jesus Christ 
has long been your all in all; can you now 
tell us he is so?' 'I can; he is — yes — but I 
am not able to speak.' He again said, 'O my 
dearest, it is enough.' She then attempted to 
lift up her face to his, and kissed him with her 
quivering lips and latest breath." 

A light and graceful form; a short, firm chin 
accentuating the delicate arch of the beautiful 
throat; a mouth small and exquisite, a faultless 
nose; eyes tender and thoughtful, with eye- 
brows perfectly arched; a rounded forehead, 
above which the hair is modestly put back 
over the shapely head, with its plain and be- 
coming cap; the whole face sweet and wom- 
anly, and illuminated with a saintly light re- 
flected from within — this is Hester Ann Rogers, 
whose Christian experience as pictured in her 
own glowing words, has quickened the faith 
and love of many, and will for generations to 
come continue to augment the spiritual forces 
that are bringing this world to our Christ. 




QUALLY a marvel of genius and 
a miracle of grace was this won- 
derful Welshman. 

He began life low down in the 
social scale, and sunk still lower 
by his vices until he touched bottom a degrad- 
ed outcast. The strong and helpful arm of 
Methodism reached down to where he was wal- 
lowing in sin and shame and lifted him up. 
Among the millions of souls that have felt its 
awakening touch and regenerating power, no 
one furnishes a more convincing demonstra- 
tion that it was the work of God. 

He was born in Treganon, Wales, in 1725. 
Losing both his parents before he was five 
years old, his kindred took charge of him. 
They sent him to school and taught him the 
forms of religion. But he had an aptitude for 
wickedness that developed itself early. At the 
age of fifteen he was notorious for his profanity, 
and was regarded as the worst boy in all that 
region. Such was his precocity in vice, and 
disinclination to work, that he only half mas- 
il02) 



THOMAS OLIVERS. lOt 



tered tlie mechanical craft — that of shoe-mak- 
ing — to which he was apprenticed. On the 
day when he was twenty-one years old he went 
into a debauch that lasted sixteen days and 
nights. He plunged headlong into the gross- 
est vices, and became so shameless that he even 
indulged his profanity and obscenity in the 
house of God. At last, with another young 
man, he committed what he called "a most 
notorious and shameful act of arch-villainy." 
Precisely what this act was is not recorded; 
but it was of such a character that he had to 
leave the town, leaving many debts unpaid and 
a bad name behind him. He went to Bristol, 
but made no change in his habits, except that 
now and then he would have brief seasons of 
remorse and alarm, which, being resisted, re- 
sulted in deeper excesses. Stifled convictions 
give fresh momentum to the sinner in his hell- 
ward course. 

His conversion was sudden. AYhitefield was 
the instrument. He went out of curiosity to 
hear the mighty preacher. Perhaps there was 
at the moment a secret yearning in his heart for 
a better life. The text was: "Is not this a 
brand plucked from the burning?" His heart 
was broken under the word, and his fiery 
Welsh spirit subdued. "Shovrers of tears," 



104 CENTENARY CAMEOS 



he says, "trickled down my cheeks. I was 
likewise filled with an utter abhorrence of my 
evil ways, and was much ashamed that I ever 
walked in them; and as my heart was thus 
turned from all evil, so it was powerfully in- 
clined to all that is good. It is not easy to 
express what strong desires I had for God and 
his service, and what resolutions I made to 
seek and serve him in future; in consequence 
of which I broke ofi* all my evil practices, and 
forsook all my wicked and foolish companions 
without delay, and gave myself up to God and 
his service with all my heart. O what reason 
had I to say, Is not this a brand plucked from 
the burning?'* 

This was a genuine conversion. He had in- 
deed given himself up to God and his service 
with all his heart. His soul burst into bloom 
under the vivifying touch of the renewing 
Spirit. At six o'clock in the morning on the 
Sunday following he went to the cathedral, 
where he received an unspeakable manifesta- 
tion of heavenly love. "I felt," he says, "as if 
I had done with earth, and was praising God 
before his throne. No words can set forth the 
joy, the rapture, the awe and reverence which 
I felt." 

He began a new life. Says one of his biog- 



THOMAS OLIVERS. 105 



raphers: "He now became a striking example 
of that sudden and entire restoration of the 
debased conscience, which distinguishes its 
mysterious nature from all other susceptibili- 
ties of the soul. He was as scrupulous as he 
had been reckless. He could do no injustice, 
' not even to the value of a pin ; ' he could not 
mention the name of God but when it was nec- 
essary, and then with the deepest awe and rev- 
erence. His daily meals were received as a 
sacrament. As to his 'thoughts, inclinations, 
and desires,' his constant inquiry was, 'Is this 
to the glory of God?' If not, he dare not in- 
dulge it." 

His first efforts in Christian service were di- 
rected to the reclamation of his former vicious 
associates. He went to Bradford, and for two 
years never missed a single sermon among the 
Methodists — hearing, he says, "generally with 
many tears." Not being yet a member, he was 
shut out of the class-meetings after the preach- 
ing. He would take his place behind the chapel 
and listen to the songs, weeping and praying 
as he listened. He was at last received into 
the Methodist Society, and in a little while he 
was exhorting; then he began to preach in the 
suburbs, studying hard in the preparation of 
his sermons, rising at five o'clock on Sunday 



106 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



mornings, and walking twenty miles during the 
day to reach his preaching-places. His old 
debts troubled his conscience. Some money 
being due him from his kindred, he went back 
to his old home to receive it; and having got- 
ten it in hand, he paid off every creditor, paying 
interest as well as principal in all cases. " You 
ought to thank God," he said to them, "for if 
he had not converted me I never should have 
thought of paying you." He went from Ford- 
ham to Shrewsbury, to Whitehurst, to Wrex- 
ham, to Chester, to Liverpool, to Manchester, 
to Birmingham, to Bristol, paying his debts 
and preaching the gospel. In all he paid 
about seventy persons — among them one at 
Whitehurst to whom he owed a sixpence. 

Wesley sent him to preach to the miners in 
Cornwall; but having sold his horse, saddle, 
and bridle to pay his debts, he set out on foot, 
with his saddle-bags, containing his books and 
linen, across his shoulder. A layman gave 
him a colt — a wiry, tough little animal, suited 
to his rider. " I have kept him," said he twen- 
ty-five years afterward, "to this day; and on 
him I have traveled comfortably not less than 
a hundred thousand miles." 

He traveled and preached forty-six years in 
England, Scotland, and Ireland. He had his 



THOMAS OLIVERS. 107 



share of trials and hardships. One one occa- 
sion, mounted upon his trusty little horse, he 
charged upon a howling mob that. had pelted 
him with stones, sticks, and other missiles, 
driving them pell-mell before him. "But," 
he says, "the women stood in their doors, some 
with both hands full of dirt, and others with 
bowls of water, which they threw at me as I 
passed by." "His traveling companion gal- 
loped off out of town as fast as he was able; 
but the evangelist, more cool and courageous, 
watched the motions of the stones and sticks 
which were likely to hit him, so as to preserve 
' a regular retreat.' " His labors were incessant, 
his zeal unquenchable, his humility perfect, 
his enjoyment of God continual and abound- 
ing. He was a joyful disciple, rejoicing even 
Jn tribulation, and in every thing giving thanks. 
During a Conference session a number of 
preachers spoke rather dolefully of their sac- 
rifices in the work of the ministry, saying they 
"had given up their all for Christ," etc. Oli- 
vers, who had listened rather impatiently to 
these whinings, rose and said: "I too have 
made heavy sacrifices to preach the gospel; I 
gave w^ five aids, as good ones as ever a man 
owned!" 

He is best known and will be longest remem- 



108 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



bered by his hymns. They are few in num- 
ber, but possess the true inspiration of genius. 
Of his hymn beginning "The God of Abra- 
ham praise," James Montgomery says: "There 
is not in our language a lyric of more majestic 
style, more elevated thought, or more glorious 
imagery. Its structure, indeed, is unattractive; 
and, on account of the short lines, occasionally 
uncouth ; but, like a stately pile of architect- 
ure, severe and simple in design, it strikes less 
on the first view than after deliberate exam- 
ination; while its proportions become more 
graceful, its dimensions expand, and the mind 
itself grows greater in contemplating it . " Many 
readers will thank us for giving a part of this 
grand hymn: 

Though nature's strength decay, 

And earth and hell withstand. 
To Canaan's bounds I urge my way 

At his command. 
The watery deep I pass, 

With Jesus in my view; 
And through the howling wilderness 

My way pursue. 

The goodly land I see, 
With peace and plenty blessed — 

A land of sacred liberty 
And endless rest. 



THOMAS OLIVERS. 109 



There milk and honey flow, 

And oil and wine abound, 
And trees of life forever grow, 

With mercy crowned. 

There dwells the Lord our King, 

The Lord our Kighteousness, 
Triumphant o'er the world and sin. 

The Prince of Peace; 
On Zion's sacred height 

His kingdom still maintains, 
And glorious with the saints in light 

Forever reigns. 

He keeps his own secure — 

He guards them by his side — 
Arrays in garments white and pure 

His spotless bride. 
With streams of sacred bliss, 

With groves of living joys, 
With all the fruits of paradise 

He still supplies. 

Before the great Three-One 

They all exulting stand, 
And tell the Avonders he hath done 

Through all their land. 
The list'ning spheres attend. 

And swell the growing fame, 
And sing, in songs which never end, 

The wondrous Name, 

His poetic genius had slumbered until evoked 
by his experience of the saving power of the 
gospel. He took part in the " Calvinistic con- 



110 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



troversy" that raged in liis day, and proved 
himself a match for such doughty disputants 
as Toplady and Sir Richard Hill, his keen 
logic compelling the latter to shelter himself 
behind his dignity. 

His last years were passed in London, where 
he preached and superintended Wesley's print- 
ing-press. The many blunders in the Armin- 
tan Magazine and other publications edited by 
him, showed plainly enough that a man may 
be a true poet and an eloquent preacher, and 
yet fail as an editor. 

On the morning of March 7, 1799, he was 
stricken with paralysis, and by noon he was 
dead. His work and his fame survive. " Wher- 
ever the worship of God has extended, in the 
English language, his grand odes resound to- 
day in its temples ; and wherever that language 
may yet extend, the Hebraic sublimity of his 
strains will rise above all ordinary hymns, like 
the sounds of trumpets and organs soaring 
above all other instruments of the choir." 




MARY BOSANQUET. 



pi 


^^^p 


1 


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1 


m 



OUEAGEOUS, sensible, saintly, 
open-hearted, open-handed Mary 
Bosanquet ! Her memoirs, traced 
by her own faithful hand, are a 
mirror in which is reflected the 
image of one of the most beautiful souls that 
has adorned the Church of Christ in these lat- 
ter ages. Her high calling was of God, and 
her in di viduality was unique. The strong faith, 
the lofty self-abnegation, the splendid womanly 
courage, the unconquerable patience exhibited 
in her life would have given her a permanent 
place in the love and memory of Methodism 
even had she never met and united her life 
with that of the apostolic Vicar of Madeley. 
As it is, their blended lives, making a picture 
of exquisite beauty, have excited the admira- 
tion and kindled the aspiration of a great mul- 
titude of souls. 

She was born of wealthy parents in Essex, 
England, in 1739. Her mental and spiritual 
development was rapid. Before she was eight 
years old she knew Jesus as her Saviour, and 

(111) 



112 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



her childisli heart was happy in his love. A 
humble Methodist servant-girl employed in the 
family, by her conversations with an older sis- 
ter, strengthened the religious impressions of 
the eager, ardent-tempered child, and helped 
to turn her life into its destined channel. As 
she grew up, she was led into the gayeties of 
the fashionable society in which her family 
moved. But the ball-room and the theater 
could not quench her religious aspirations. 
In London she met a circle of intelligent Meth- 
odist women. In their congenial society her 
spiritual life took a fresh and rapid growth. 
Her purpose to live a holy life was more deep- 
ly rooted, and her soul received a fuller mani- 
festation of light and love from the Lord. 
"Such a sweet sense of God," she says, "the 
greatness of his love, and willingness to save 
to the uttermost, remained on my mind, that 
if I but thought on the word holiness, or of 
the adorable name of Jesus, my heart seemed 
to take fire in an instant, and my desires were 
more intensely fixed on God than ever I had 
found them before." 

Shunning the gayeties by which her parents 
wished to banish her religious disposition, she 
pleaded successfully to be left with her Chris- 
tian friends in London. Here she met with Sa- 



MARY BOSANQUET. 113 



rah Ryan, an unpretentious Methodist woman, 
whose strong common sense and extraordinary 
piety make her one of the most remarkable 
figures among the notable men and women of 
that eventful time, xlt the house of Sarah 
Ryan a number of the most devout of the Lon- 
don "Methodists often met together. "The 
more I saw of that family," she says, "the 
more I was convinced that Christ had yet a 
pure Church below; and often, while in their 
company, I thought myself with the hundred 
and twenty that waited to be baptized by the 
Holy Spirit. Whenever I was from home this 
was the place of my residence, and truly I 
found it to be a little Bethel." She had in- 
deed found her true element, and henceforth 
this people were to be her people, and their 
God her God. 

Deploring the turn her life had taken, her 
father tried to exact from her a promise that 
she would not attempt to influence her younger 
brothers to become Christians in her sense of 
the word. "I think, sir, I dare not consent to 
that," she mefekly but firmly answered. " Then 
you force me to put you out of my house," he 
said. "Yes, sir," she replied; "according to 
your view of things, I acknowledge it." And 
she went forth with a sad heart, but without a 



114 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



word of complaint. She took lodgings at some 
distance from her father's house, where, with 
a maid-servant, she lived in qniet, devoting 
herself to Christian labor, and giving all her 
income above her own actual necessities to 
benevolence. "And now that thought, 'I am 
brought out of the world, I have nothing to 
do but to be holy, both in body and spirit,' filled 
me," she says, "with consolation; thankfulness 
overflowed my heart ; and such a spirit of peace 
and content flowed into my soul that all about me 
seemed a little heaven. I had now daily more 
and more cause for praise. I was acquainted 
with many of the excellent of the earth, and 
my delight was in them. Yet I was not with- 
out my cross; for every time I went to see my 
dear parents, what I felt, when toward night 
I rose up to go away, cannot well be imagined. 
Not that I wished to abide there; but there 
was something in bidding farewell to those un- 
der whose roof I had always lived that used to 
afl'ect me much, though I saw the wise and gra- 
cious hand of God in it all, and that he had by 
this means set me free for his own service." 
Brave, loving, trusting heart! These simple 
words convey the whole pathos of the situation. 
Thus "set free" for God's service, she joy- 
fully gave her life wholly to it. Identifying 



MARY BOSANQUET. 



115 



herself fully with the Methodist people, she 
took an active part in their labors, and became 
a witness for its doctrines, never ceasing in 
her beneficent activities and benefactions, and 
never faltering in her testimony nntil it was 
sealed in death. 

A house belonging to her in Laytonstone, 
her native place, becoming vacant, with her 
friend, Sarah Eyan, she removed thither, and 
opened a charity school for orphan children. 
The place became also noted as a preaching- 
place. Mr. Wesley loved to visit it. " O what 
a house of God is here!" he writes' in 1765; 
"not only for decency and order, but for the 
life and power of religion." The institution 
was afterward removed to Cross Hall, in York- 
shire, and became a center of religious life and 
labors. "It is a pattern and general blessing 
to the country," wrote Wesley in 1770. The 
rigid economy, the self-denial, the fervent 
prayer, the unceasing toil she put into this 
work are recorded. "If Christ was now upon 
earth," she wrote, "and in want of food and rai- 
ment, should I be afraid to give him mine, for 
fear of wanting it myself? " " It is very easy," 
she writes again, " to give our neighbor what we 
can spare, but to pinch ourselves, and even to 
run the risk of debts and distress for their sakes, 



116 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



makes ihe work far more hard." Declining all 
matrimonial offers, she kept to her work. 

The field of usefulness widened before her. 
She became a band-leader and class-leader, 
and she was a wise, faithful, loving guide to 
the souls committed to her charge. She was 
led a step further, and became a public speaker. 
Such was her good sense and modesty that no 
harm resulted to her or to religion. Of her 
discourses Mr. Wesley said: "Her words are 
as a fire, conveying both light and heat to the 
hearts of all that hear." Judging by the fruits 
of her ministry, Mr. Wesley was right in say- 
ing she had "an extraordinary call." 

There was a romantic beauty attending her 
marriage to Mr. Fletcher in 1781. They had 
met twenty-five years before. Because of her 
large fortune, he had refrained from address- 
ing her at that time; but on both their hearts 
impressions were made that time had not ef- 
faced. Now, when her fortune was reduced, 
and no imputation of a mercenary motive could 
be made by even the most suspicious, he wrote 
to her avowing the regard which had so long 
been locked as a secret in his breast. His suit 
was not repulsed, for his image had never left 
her faithful heart. They were married, and 
no happier union has existed since the primal 



MARY BOSANQUET. 



117 



pair were wedded in paradise. It was a union 
of souls born for each, other, and tuned alike 
to elevated thoughts, heavenly affections, and 
holy desires. Her sphere of action was en- 
larged, and his ministry received from her 
fresh inspiration and power. Three short 
years of perfect conjugal felicity passed, when, 
by the death of Fletcher, she was again left 
alone. During thirty years of " solemn, awful 
widowhood," she celebrated prayerfully the re- 
turning anniversaries of their marriage, which 
happened to be also her own and his birthday, 
and the day of his death. On the twenty- 
eighth anniversary she wrote: "Nov.^ 12, 1809. 
— Twenty-eight years this day, and at this hour, 
I gave my hand and heart to John William de 
la rietchere. A profitable and blessed period 
of my life. I feel at this moment a more ten- 
der affection toward him than I did at that 
time, and by faith I now join my hand afresh 
with his." Her long widowhood Avas not spent 
in solitude, morbidly nursing her sorrow for 
the dead. Her house was "an inn for the 
Lord's people;" many resorted to her for re- 
ligious counsel and comfort; she kept up an 
extensive correspondence; she held regular 
religious meetings that were largely attended; 
and she was a visitor and unfailing helper of 



118 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the poor and the sick. She saved that she 
might give. For her own apparel she never 
spent more than twenty dollars a year. "She 
never heard of a case of distress without re- 
lieving it, if in her power," said one who knew 
her well. Many were brought to Christ by 
her, and the whole region round about her was 
blessed by her influence. She was happy in 
God, and "walked with him in white" to the 
end. 

Such entries as this in her dairy show what 
was the usual temper of her soul: "I leave all 
in thy dear hand, my adorable Lord, and only 
long for a deeper plunge into God." 

In the still hour between midnight and day- 
break, December 9, 1815, she died. The Bride- 
groom came, and found her ready and waiting. 
The friend who watched in her sick-chamber, 
no longer hearing her breathe, approached the 
bedside, and found that the end had come. 
" When I first undrew the curtain, and saw her 
dear head dropped off the pillow, and looking 
so sweetly composed, I could not persuade my- 
self the spirit was fled till I took her in my 
arms, and found no motion left. I then per- 
ceived the moment she had so much longed 
for had arrived— the happy moment when she 
should gain the blissful shore." 



MARY BOSANQUET. 119 



A figure stout yet elastic, features uneven 
yet pleasing and beaming with the vivacity of 
her French blood; the chin that of a woman 
who could take hold and hold on to what she 
approved; a beautiful mouth, the full lips seem- 
ing ready to break out in gracious speech; the 
large, expressive eyes lighting up the whole 
face, the irregular curve of the eyebrows and 
short and peculiarly arched forehead giving a 
touch of singularity to the whole — Mary Bos- 
anquet smiles on us serenely and sweetly from 
the heights whence she beckons to the women 
of Methodism to follow on to know the Lord 
in the strength of an unwavering faith, and in 
the fullness of perfect love 








HEKE he goes — an embodied itin- 
erancy, a bishop whose episcopal 
I throne is in the saddle, whose 
diocese is a continent. 

There he goes — a bishop on 
horseback, climbing the hills, swimming the 
creeks and rivers, threading the forest trails, 
plashing through the prairie mnd, drenched 
by the rains, buffeted by the winds; riding on, 
winter, spring, summer, and autumn — riding 
on for forty-five years, preaching sixteen thou- 
sand ^YQ hundred sermons, traveling two hun- 
dred and seventy thousand miles, presiding in 
two hundred and twenty-four Annual Confer- 
ences, and ordaining four thousand preachers. 
There he goes — going was his passion. Nat- 
ural bent in his case was sanctified to the at- 
tainment of the gracious purpose of God. The 
genius that would have made a world-traveled 
adventurer by divine grace made a world- 
revered apostle. The search for souls was the 
spring of an intenser activity than the search 
for new scenes and undiscovered lands. 
(120) 




FRANCIS ASBURY. 



FRANCIS ASBURY. 121 



There lie goes — thus the Church will always 
look at him. His name can scarcely be asso- 
ciated specially with any particular spot of 
earth, for his tireless feet tarried not at any 
one place longer than was necessary to speak 
his message. The regions beyond had a charm 
for him that lured him on. The sinner that 
nobody else had found was the one to whom 
he felt called to go to, and whom he tracked 
with unflagging steps until he overtook him 
and told him that Christ Jesus came into the 
world to save sinners. 

There he goes — and there he will be going 
as long as the Alleghanies stand on their rocky 
foundations and the Gulf breezes stir the mag- 
nolia blooms in the South. Invisible to the 
bodily eye, yet present in the inspiration of 
his grand and heroic life, he still rides by the 
side of the men of God who carry the gospel 
into the wilderness-places; and he will be thus 
riding with them until the last round is made 
on the last circuit, and the angel-reapers shall 
come to gather in the final harvest. 

He was born August 20, 1745, in Stafford- 
shire, England, "of amiable and respectable" 
parents. He was converted at an early age, 
his godly mother being the chief human agent 
in the gracious work. At seventeen he was a 



122 CENTENARY CAMEOS 



class-leader and local preacher. " My mother," 
he says, "used to take me with her to a female 
meeting which she conducted once a fortnight 
for the purpose of reading the Scriptures and 
giving out hymns." Soon he was exhorting, 
and then it was but a short time before he be- 
gan to preach. At twenty-one he entered the 
regular work as a traveling preacher. This 
was a quick movement, but the guiding and 
helping hand of God is visible in it. He was 
called to a great work, and he ripened for it 
rapidly. The harvest was white for his coming 
across the sea. 

He felt inwardly moved to go to America, 
but hesitated, "being unwilling," he said, "to 
do my own will, or to run before I was sent." 
He waited for the word. 

When a call was made at the Conference 
held at Bristol in 1771 for preachers for Amer- 
ica he offered himself. Mr. Wesley, reading 
rightly the quiet young preacher, accepted him. 
He arrived in America October 7, 1771, and 
was heartily welcomed by the little handful of 
Methodists. His ruling passion exhibited it- 
self at the start. "My brethren," he says, 
" seem unwilling to leave the cities, but I think 
I shall show them the way." He organized a 
new circuit, "embracing a large region of coun- 



FRANCIS ASBURY. 123 



try around New York, and kept the gospel 
sounding through it all winter; preaching in 
log -cabins, in court-houses, in prisons, and 
even at public executions, though but rarely 
in churches; for, including Strawbridge's log- 
hut, there were as yet only three Methodist 
preaching-houses in all North America." 

Verily he showed them the way. The next 
year, despite his youth, he was placed by Mr. 
Wesley at the head of his preachers in America. 

He was ordained bishop when he was thirty- 
nine years old, when there were less than fif- 
teen thousand members and but eighty preach- 
ers in the Methodist Church. He organized 
the entire work into one episcopal circuit, over 
which he traveled once or oftener every year. 
This circuit grew, and he grew with it. His 
plans were constantly enlarged, and his execu- 
tive ability developed to meet every emergency. 

The growth of a great man and the growth 
of a great movement present a study of pecul- 
iar interest. This man and the movement he 
led expanded together until he became the 
grandest figure, and that movement the grand- 
est, in the religious history of the New World. 

In him were combined the qualities that fit- 
ted him for the leadership to which he was 
called. He was an unepauleted general of the 



124 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



army of the Lord. Self -poised, calm, indom- 
itable, planning and executing quickly, with 
keen insight into character, he had in him the 
elements that make great captains. His words 
were few, and went direct to the mark. He 
took the straightest line, both in speech and 
action. A rigid disciplinarian, he had a meth- 
od in doing every thing. There was a touch 
of sternness in his temper that might have 
been repellent but for his unaffected humility. 
His presence was most impressive and inspir- 
ing. "Who of us," said one of his co-labor- 
ers, " could be in his company without feeling 
impressed with a reverential awe and profound 
respect? It was almost impossible to approach 
him without feeling the strong influence of his 
spirit and presence. There was something in 
this remarkable fact almost inexplicable and 
indescribable. Was it owing to the strength 
and elevation of his spirit, his dignity and 
majesty of his soul, or the sacred profession 
with which he was clothed, as an embassador 
of God, invested with divine authority? But 
so it was; it appeared as though the very at- 
mosphere in which he moved gave unusual 
sensations of diffidence and humble restraint 
to the boldest confidence of man." 

He led the hosts he commanded. No man 



FRANCIS ASBURY. 125 



was required by him to do or dare any thing 
from which he himself would have shrunk. 
If he appointed his fellow-itinerants to hard 
circuits, his own was the largest and hardest of 
all. If he condemned all softness and ease- 
seeking in others, his own example was in 
keeping with his words. When his appoint- 
ments of the preachers were "read out" at an 
Annual Conference, he started at once on his 
rounds. The dissatisfied preacher went to the ) 

place assigned him — there was no alternative 
or appeal. It was easier to go to the hardest 
place than it was to overtake the flying bishop ! 
Such a leader will be obeyed in the exercise of 
legitimate authority. A mere bureau bishop 
in his place at that day would have been as 
useless as a wooden image of a man. He was 
absolutely fearless. Though at times a little 
tinged with melancholy, and given to intro- 
spective broodings, he was almost incapable of 
discouragement. If he had seasons when bur- 
dened with the care of all the churches he felt 
lonely and depressed, he gave no sign of it to 
the others; he carried his griefs and anxieties 
to God, and bravely faced the world. Once, 
toward the end his life, he spoke of his trials 
in these pathetic words: "Ah! often has my 
heart been overwhelmed during my forty years' 



126 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



pilgrimage in America. And if I had been a 
man of tears I might have wept my life away; 
but Christ has been a hiding-place, a covert 
from the stormy blast; yea, he has been the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 
"Here," says the narrator, "his voice trem- 
bled a little, his lips quivered, and the tears 
started from his half-closed, clear blue eye." 
Solemn and dignified in his manner, with a 
sonorous and commanding voice, and possess- 
ing that unction from the Holy One which is 
more to the pulpit than any thing else, he 
was a preacher of great power, his discourses 
at times being attended with an eloquence 
"which spoke a soul full of God, and, like a 
mountain torrent, swept all before it." 

He was mighty in the Scriptures. He learned 
Greek and Hebrew on horseback. A professor 
in a modern Biblical school might have given 
him some points in scholarship, but he dug 
deep into this mine of heavenly riches, and 
became a masterly expounder of the Bible. 

He was specially endowed with the praying 
gift, if it may be so called. Pray erf ulness was 
his most characteristic quality. He prayed so 
much in secret that his soul was always tuned 
for leading public devotions. In prayer he 
received divine illumination in the study of 



FRANCIS ASBURY. 127 

the sacred oracles ; on liis knees he sought and 
found strength to bear the heavy burdens, 
guidance amid the perplexities and comfort 
under the sorrows of his life. Prayer was his 
recreation. From the place of secret prayer 
he went into the pulpit with his face shining 
like that of Moses when he came doAvn from 
the mount where he had talked with God, and 
the awe-struck multitude felt strangely moved 
while he spoke to them the word of life. On 
his journeys he would pray in a humble cabin 
with such sweetness, tenderness, and power 
that his visit was remembered as a benedic- 
tion, and the tradition is handed down to chil- 
dren's children. By the way-side, yielding to 
a sudden impulse, he kneeled down and prayed 
for a negro ferryman, and twenty years after- 
ward, meeting him again, found that his im- 
promptu prayer was blessed to the saving of a 
soul. This is the key to his wonderful career; 
through the channel of prayer the supernat- 
ural element flowed into the life of this man 
of God, and flowed out again in blessing to 
the world. God was with him, and wrought 
mightily by his hand because he waited daily 
at his feet in prayer for power from on high. 
Maintaining this expectant, receptive attitude 
toward the Pentecostal promise, his soul en- 



128 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



joyed its perpetual fulfillment. As long as 
his successors shall follow his example in this 
regard, the hosts of our Israel will not halt in 
their triumphant march, and the pillar of cloud 
shall lead them by day and the pillar of fire by 
night. 

He never married. He chose a single life as 
best suited to his peculiar work as a pioneer 
bishop; and if there was any memory of an 
early dream of love it was a secret locked in 
his own breast. This playful entry in his jour- 
nal indicates his view of matrimony as it ap- 
plied to his own case: "I have read Adam 
Clarke, and am amused as well as instructed. 
He indirectly unchristianizes old bachelors. 
Woe is me! " The Church was his bride. He 
had no fixed home on earth, and no woman, 
however devoted or heroic, could have kept up 
with him in his journeys on horseback over 
the continent. His successors, with the ex- 
ception of McKendree, have not followed his 
example in this matter. His course was best 
for him. But a sti^y of the lives of the bish- 
ops who have come after him will make it plain 
that much of this personal religious growth 
and power was owing to the influence of their 
faithful, patient, self-denying wives. 

He preached his last sermon in Richmond, 



FRANCIS ASBURY. 129 



Ya., March 24, 1816; on March 31 he died in 
Spottsylvania county, in the same State, and 
the journey of the matchless itinerant ended. 

A medium sized man, erect, compact, and 
sinewy, with a ruddy complexion, lips full and 
firm; a massive under-Jawand square, military 
chin; a nose short and flattish, with the swell- 
ing nostril that indicates spirit and power; 
deep blue eyes that now flashed keen, quick 
glances, and anon seemed to be fixed in high 
abstraction; a forehead broad but not high, 
the silver hair falling negligently about the 
kindly yet rugged face — that is Francis As- 
bury, the typical itinerant, the bishop on horse- 
back, who will ride at the head of the advanc- 
ing columns of American Methodists until they 
shall be disbanded, when the final victory of 
the militant Church shall bring the kingdoms 
of this world under the dominion of the risen, 
reigning Son of God. 
9 







LESSING8 on this free-hearted, 
lively, uncalculating, dauntless, 
generous Irishman, the first of a 
noble race — the race of Ameri- 
can Methodist church-builders! 
Blessings on his true-hearted, self-denying wife ! 
And blessings on his successors! The wilder- 
ness has been made glad for them, and the des- 
ert made to rejoice and blossom as the rose. 
He typed many of his tribe, having more faith 
than thrift, and being more anxious to build a 
house for the Lord than for himself. He had 
more enterprise than prudence, and did not 
count the cost as carefully as he might have 
done. In this particular his successors have 
often followed him too closely. But the Lord 
was with his zealous servant, and from every 
difficulty in which his enthusiasm involved 
him he. was happily delivered. He was a gen- 
uine enthusiast, feeling that what ought to be 
done could be done. Methodism was burned 
into his Irish heart in the fervent heat of the 
great revival in Ireland, and it stood the test 
(130) 




ROBERT STRAWBRIDGE. 



ROBERT STRAWBRIDGE. 131 



of transportation across the ocean. It was 
still burning in his heart when he landed in 
the New World in the year 1760. By some 
law of affinities he found his way to Mary- 
land, and settled with his patient wife on 
Sam's Creek, within a few miles of Baltimore. 
Here he tilled the earth and preached the gos- 
pel. He at once opened his own house as a 
preaching-place — a procedure which has been 
imitated by many who, in the settlement of our 
"Western country, have thus transformed their 
humble log-cabins into temples for the worship 
of the Lord God Almighty. His congrega- 
tions were large. There was a charm and a 
power in the eloquence of this irrepressible 
Irishman, whose brogue was just strong enough 
to give emphasis to his pronunciation and a 
musical roll to his voice. The best English 
spoken on earth is that of an educated Irish- 
man; and from the lips of even a half-edu- 
cated one it often flows forth with peculiar 
sweetness, pathos, and power. And there was 
another attraction: he preached and prayed 
extemporaneously without printed book or 
manuscript. This was then a novelty in Mary- 
land, where the liturgy of a sleeping, dying 
Church was droned and dragged through 
wearily at the regular places of worship. 



132 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



There was an awakening on Sam's Creek. 
A fire was kindled that was to spread over the 
continent. A society was organized consisting 
at the start of twelve or fifteen persons. This, 
says Bishop Asbnry, was "the first society in 
Maryland and America." Methodism here 
struck its roots into a rich and kindly soil, and 
has since grown into a mighty tree whose 
branches have spread east, west, north, and 
south. 

He was a better preacher than farmer. A 
man who has a call to the ministry ought to 
preach better than he can do any thing else. 
The ability to preach is a part of the proof 
that preaching is his proper calling. When a 
man tries to preach and cannot, there is a mis- 
take somewhere. The Lord never requires a 
man to do what he is unable to perform. 

The work thus begun grew, and other socie- 
ties were formed in the adjacent regions — 
fires lighted in the midst of surrounding spir- 
itual darkness. 

In 1764 he built a log meeting-house near 
his home — the fiest Methodist chukch in 
America. Great crowds of hearers, white and 
black, congregated here, to whom their God- 
commissioned spiritual instructor and guide 
preached the word of life with the power of 



ROBERT STRAWBRIDGE. 133 



tlie Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. His 
careful, thrifty wife, by severe economy and 
hard work, aided by the friendly neighbors, 
kept the family from starving. Nothing be- 
yond this is recorded of this woman — her 
Christian name is not even mentioned in any 
record we have seen — but if ever American 
Methodism should erect a statue in honor 
of the builder of the first Methodist church 
in America, this quiet, uncomplaining little 
woman should stand in monumental marble 
by his side. 

There was a little irregularity in this work, 
but the Lord did not withhold his blessing. 
It is his pleasure that souls should be saved 
irregularly rather than that they should be 
lost. The zealous preacher undertook to bap- 
tize the children and to celebrate the Lord's 
Supper, which at that time were regarded as 
the exclusive functions of the regular clergy. 
This brought him in collision with the iron- 
willed and tenacious Asbury; but the good 
sense . of the one and the good nature of the 
other obviated any serious consequences. 

The ministry of this volunteer evangelist was 
a reproductive ministry — another strong proof 
that it was of God. Foui* or five preachers w^ere 
raised up who dispensed the gospel as best 



134 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



they could on tlie Sabbath, working for their 
daily bread on the other days of the week. It 
was, strictly speaking, a lay ministry with lay 
helpers, springing np providentially under pe- 
culiar conditions, and furnishing one of innu- 
merable examples that disprove the assump- 
tion that the Church of Christ is dependent, 
either for its organic life or spiritual potency, 
upon an unbroken tactual succession of ec- 
clesiastical functionaries. The log-cabin, on 
Sam's Creek, in which a man of God, with lips 
touched with holy fire, preached the pure gos- 
pel to men and women born of God and bap- 
tized with the Holy Ghost, was more truly the 
house of the Lord than the grandest cathedral 
on earth in which surpliced formalists recite 
lifeless words to listless pews. 

In 1766 a wealthy Marylander, Capt. Charles 
Ridgely, gave our pioneer church-builder a 
life-lease of a good farm, and thus the toils of 
the noble wife were lightened, and the ardent 
preacher exulted in the privilege of preaching 
a free gospel untrammeled. 

Straight and well-formed, arrayed in loose- 
fitting garments of clerical cut; a face over- 
flowing with good humor, the lines of the 
mouth rather lacking in decision; well-formed 
nose, laughing eyes, ears small and finely 



ROBERT STRAWBRIDGE. 



135 



shaped, hair combed back from above a rather 
low forehead, and hanging in negligent curli- 
ness about his head; the whole tout-ensemble 
that of an easy-going, amiable, sunny-sonled, 
magnetic man, knowable and lovable by all 
sorts of people — -Kobert Strawbridge stands 
before us, the man who, in building a house 
for the Lord in his new home in the New 
World, built himself a monument that will 
last as long as Methodists shall continue to 
build churches and preach a free salvation to 
the world. 




iphsmag Webb. 




IS title is Captain Webb. By it 
he will be known and honored as 
long as Methodism has a name 
and a place in the earth. He 
helped to lay its foundations in 
America in troublous times, and his name is 
indelibly engraved on the corner-stone of the 
grand superstructure. 

He was of good family, and inherited a con- 
siderable estate. The first distinct glimpse we 
get of him he was a young captain in the Brit- 
ish army. He was one of the gallant force 
that stormed Louisburg, planting the cross of 
St. George upon its ramparts, after a desper- 
ate conflict. It was a glorious day for the 
British troops, but it cost him dear. A bullet 
hit him in the right eye in the midst of the 
fight, and destroyed it. Lying among the 
wounded and the dead when the battle was 
over, he heard himself called dead, but was 
able to deny it, and in a few weeks was again 
on duty. He fought by the side of Washing- 
ton at " Braddock's defeat." Both escaped that 
(136) 




THOMAS WEBB. 



THOMAS WEBB. 137 



terrible day, God having other work for them 
to do. Four years later he was among the he- 
roes that scaled the heights of Abraham with 
the immortal Wolfe, and was again wounded — 
this time in the arm. When peace w^as de- 
clared he returned to England minus an eye 
and covered with what the world calls glory. 

Under a sermon preached by Mr. Wesley at 
Bristol in 1765 he was awakened. He had a 
long and painful struggle before his proud 
and fiery spirit yielded to be saved by grace. 
But when he did surrender, he did so with sol- 
dier-like completeness. He kept back noth- 
ing, and his perfect surrender was follow^ed 
by perfect acceptance. His consciousness of 
sins forgiven was undoubting and joyful. He 
enlisted for life as a soldier of Jesus Christ, 
and henceforth his battles were to be fought 
with other than carnal weapons. With all the 
ardor of a generous and enthusiastic nature 
he threw himself into the Methodist move- 
ment that was putting a new element into the 
religious life of England. Without delay he 
joined the Methodist Society at Bristol. Ho 
found among them the fellowship that was 
congenial to his nature and the means of grace 
that nourished the new life in which he re- 
joiced with exceeding joy. His frank, buoyant 



138 CENTENARY GAMEOS. 



nature luxuriated in the theology, the social 
life, and the aggressive energy of Methodism 
as it then was, in the bloom and freshness and 
sweetness of its first days of triumph. 

It was not long before the rejoicing soldier 
made an important discovery — he found that 
God had called him to preach the gospel. En- 
tering a Methodist congregation at Bath, and 
finding that the expected preacher had failed to 
appear, he went forward to the altar in his 
regimentals, and spoke to the people with such 
power and pathos that there was a great stir 
among them. His own Christian experience 
was his theme, and as it was poured forth in 
an impetuous torrent from his glowing heart, 
it swept his hearers on with him in a resistless 
tide of feeling. 

Wesley was not slow in discerning this new 
light that had suddenly appeared in an unex- 
pected quarter. The great leader loved to en- 
list military men in the work of the Church — 
he knew that the discipline, the obedience, and 
the courage characteristic of the true soldier, 
when turned to the nobler service of the Cap- 
tain of our salvation, made them successful 
leaders in his army. He soon gave him a 
preacher's license, and sent him forth an ac- 
credited minister of Jesus Christ. His labors 



THOMAS WEBB. 139 



were croY/necl with success from the start. 
The people heard the bluff soldier with de- 
light, and caught fire from contact with a spirit 
so ablaze with holy zeal. They trembled un- 
der his fiery f ulminations, and wept with him 
as he portrayed the unutterable sorrows of the 
Son of God, who loved the world and gave 
himself for it. " The Captain is full of life and 
fire," said AVesley, after hearing him preach. 
The secret of his power was the old secret 
ever new — he was a man of prayer. "He- 
wrestled," said an intimate friend, "day and 
night with God for that degree of grace which 
he stood in need of, that he might stand firm 
as the beaten anvil to the stroke, and he was 
favored with those communications from above 
which made him bold to declare the whole 
counsel of God. His evidence of the favor of 
God was so bright that he never lost a sense 
of that blessed truth, the blood of Jesus Christ 
cleanseth us from all sin." It is the old story 
— he wrestled and prevailed. The wrestlers 
only are the conquerors. The preacher must 
prevail with God in the closet before he will 
be able to prevail with men in the pulpit. 

The divine hand was plainly visible in the 
next important turn in his life. In 1776 he 
was sent to Albany, New York, in charge of the 



140 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



barracks where the British soldiers were sta- 
tioned. He was specially needed in America 
just then, and his coming was one of the many 
coincidents that mark the providential charac- 
ter of the events connected with the planting 
of Methodism in America. Hearing that there 
was a small band of Methodists in New York, 
he soon paid them a visit. The little company 
assembled in Philip Embury's house were sur- 
prised and somewhat frightened when a Brit- 
ish officer in full uniform entered the room. 
But their astonishment and alarm gave way to 
joy when he made himself known to them. His 
ability as a preacher, his strong character, and 
his money at once put him in the lead among 
them. The situation suited the zealous, gener- 
ous soldier. He had little to do as a barrack- 
master, and the whole country was before him as 
a field of evangelical labor. He took an active 
part in obtaining the site for the John Street 
Church, and headed the subscription with a 
liberal sum. While the church was being 
built he visited Philadelphia, where he organ- 
ized a Methodist society, and collected money 
for the John Street Church. In 1779 he was 
again in Philadelphia, and aided Mr. Pilmoor 
and the society in the purchase of St. George's 
Church, to which he himself was a liberal con- 



THOMAS WEBB. 141 



tributor. He extended his labors to New Jer- 
sey, Delaware, and Baltimore, stirring the peo- 
ple by his powerful appeals, inspiriting them by 
his unfailing courage, and giving substantial 
help to the initial enterprises of American 
Methodism by the free and judicious use of 
his money. The work of the Lord was a lux- 
ury to him, and he was willing to pay for its 
enjoyment. He has had some successors in 
this line of things — men and women who have 
given themselves and their substance wholly 
and gladly to the service of Christ, thus ex- 
hibiting indisputable proof that the splendid 
ideal of Christian character presented in the 
New Testament was not the dream of enthu- 
siasts in a by-gone age, but a picture, painted 
by the Holy Spirit, whose living reality shall 
adorn the Church and bless the world until 
the glory and honor of the nations shall be 
brought into the New Jerusalem descending 
out of heaven from God. 

In 1772 he returned to England for the pur- 
pose of securing men and money for the work 
of Methodism in America. He preached in 
London, Dublin, and other places, eliciting a 
deep interest in behalf of the work in Amer- 
ica. At the Conference at Leeds he made a 
thrilling appeal for recruits. The next year 



142 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



(1773) lie came back to America, bringing 
with him two devout and able men, Eankin 
and Shadford. He made a special effort to 
bring over Joseph Benson, but failed — that 
wiry and brainy little giant felt no call to cross 
the Atlantic. The zeal of the soldier-evangel- 
ist burned as intensely as ever, and his popu- 
larity as a preacher was unabated. Great 
crowds thronged to hear him. John Adams 
—afterward President of the United States^ 
heard him at St. George's, and said: "In the 
evening I went to the Methodist meeting, and 
heard Mr. Webb, the old soldier, who first 
came to America under General Braddock. 
He is one of the most fluent, eloquent men I 
ever heard." 

An event which changed the destinies of 
mankind brought his ministry in America to a 
close. The war of the American Kevolution 
broke out, and America "became too hot" for 
the frank, warm-blooded British soldier. He 
had done his work. Bidding a reluctant fare- 
well to America, he left forever the land which 
had been the theater of the most thrilling in- 
cidents of his eventful life. 

After his final return to England he traveled 
and preached in his military dress, and scat- 
tered his money with a liberal hand. AVe sus- 



THOMAS WEBB. 143 



pect there was a slight vein of eccentricity in 
his large, brave, liberal nature. The red coat 
in the pulpit was a novelty that attracted a 
class of hearers who listened, wept, repented, 
and believed under his preaching. His noble 
presence and commanding voice were admired 
by military men, and many a soldier of King 
George was led by him to become a soldier of 
Jesus Christ. His head-quarters were at Bris- 
tol, where he was a chief instrument in the erec- 
tion of the Portland Street Chapel. 

Like a shock of corn, fully ripe, he was taken 
to his reward on high in his seventy-second year. 
He died suddenly, July 20, 1796. He took his 
supper and went to bed at ten o'clock, in his 
usual health. In less than an hour he was in 
the world of spirits. He had expressed a pre- 
sentiment that his departure would be sudden, 
and we may be sure the old Captain was ready, 
and went sweeping through the gates, washed 
in the blood of the Lamb. 

A sturdy, thick-set, full-chested man, of erect 
military carriage, clad in flaming British army 
uniform, with just a little of the self-asserting 
manner that indicates that he will insist on be- 
ing heard when he has something to say; his 
face about equally expressive of benevolence 
and determination; his one good eye beaming 



144 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



kindly, and the other veiled with a green shade; 
the bald head, nearly as round as a bullet, 
swelling a little where the organ of veneration 
is supposed to be located; and with plenty o£ 
pugnacity and driving-force behind his ears — 
this is Captain Webb, the bluff,- brave, fiery 
yet tender soldier-saint, who will have a place 
among the noble historic figures that crowd 
the canvas in the Centenary picture until the 
last battle of the militant Church shall have 
been fought, and the last victory won. 




f^..ii54 



tf^<^ 




BARBARA HECK. 




OT a musical name^ — it does not 
belong to a heroine of the fash- 
ionable type; but it is a name 
that American Methodists will 
not let die. She had not high 
birth, wealth, genius, nor extraordinary beau- 
ty. She had simple-hearted fidelity to her 
Lord. This opened to her the gate of oppor- 
tunity, and placed the nimbus of saintly glory 
on her brow. This humble, loving woman's 
life writes in illuminated letters the lesson we 
are so slow to learn, that faithfulness is the 
one condition of successful Christian service 
and the guarantee of the fullest measure of 
reward when the Lord of the vineyard shall 
come to reckon with his servants. 

Martyr-blood was in her veins. The history 
is curious and romantic. Driven by the pajjal 
troops of Louis the Fourteenth from the Pa- 
latinate, so called, on the French side of the 
Rhine, the Protestant exiles found refuge with- 
in the lines of Marlborough. By order of 
Queen Anne they were dispersed in England, 
10 a45) 



146 CENTEKTARY CAMEOS. 



Ireland, and America. A little company of 
the refugees found their way to Balligarrane, 
near Limerick, and in due time the Methodists 
found their way to them— they will find their 
way to all the world sooner or later. These 
brave, liberty - loving, Bible - reading people 
Avere quickly responsive to the touch of Meth- 
odism. It suited the genius of a people with 
such a history. They accepted its doctrines as 
harmonizing with the teaching of their well- 
read Bibles, and in its peculiar usages they 
thought they had found again the means of 
grace that were enjoyed by believers in those 
glorious first days after the Pentecost, when 
the dew of its youth was upon the primitive 
Church. 

By a singular stroke of Divine Providence 
the descendants of these expatriated Protest- 
ants were destined to bear an important part 
in the work of planting Methodism in Amer- 
ica. "On a spring morning in 1760," says an 
Irish writer, " a group of emigrants might have 
been seen at the custom-house quay. Limerick, 
preparing to embark for America. At that 
time emigration was not so common an occur- 
rence as it is now, and the excitement connect- 
ed with their departure was intense. They 
were Palatines from Baligarrane, and were ac- 



BARBARA HECK. 147 



companied to the vessel's side by crowds of 
their companions and friends, some of whom 
had come sixteen miles to say 'Farewell' for 
the last time. The vessel arrived safely in 
New York on the 10th of August, 1760. ,Who 
that pictures before his mind that company of 
Christian emigrants leaving the Irish shore but 
must be struck with the simple beauty of the 
scene ? Yet who among the crowd that saw them 
leave could have thought that two of the little 
band were destined, in the mysterious provi- 
dence of God, to influence for good countless 
myriads, and that their names should live as 
long as the sun and moon endure? Yet so it 
was. That vessel contained Philip Embury, 
the first class-leader and local preacher of 
Methodism on the American continent, and 
Barbara Heck, 'a mother in Israel,' one of its 
first members." 

Philip Embury had heard John Wesley 
preach in Ireland in 1752. He was converted 
on Christmas-day of the same year. "The 
Lord," he says, "shone into my soul, by a 
glimpse of his redeeming love, being an ear- 
nest of my redemption in Christ Jesus, to 
whom be glory forever and ever. Amen." He 
was studious, honest-minded, and amiable, and 
was soon licensed as a local preacher. But he 



148 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



was morbidly modest and timid, and on arriv- 
ing at New York he became discouraged and 
ceased to preach to his countrymen, many of 
whom yielded to the temptations of a new 
country, and made shipwreck of faith. Late 
in the year 1765 another vessel arrived in New 
York, bringing over a number of other Pala- 
tine families, relatives and friends and neigh- 
bors of Embury. Mrs. Barbara Heck, who 
had been living in New York since 1760, often 
visited these families. Her eldest brother, 
Paul Ruckle, was one of the company. An 
incident occurred during one of these visits 
that in its far-reaching influence opened a new 
chapter in the history of the Church, and is 
felt to this hour. Entering the room she found 
a party playing cards. The spirit of the fear- 
less w^oman was stirred by the sight, and forth- 
with with flashing eyes she seized the cards 
and threw them into the fire. This is a good 
example for all Methodist mothers. And if 
all of them had done likewise, many a noble 
boy would have been saved from the .gambler's 
passion and the gambler's hell. Giving the 
card-players a warning and an exhortation that 
electrified them, she made her way straight to 
the house of Embury, who was her cousin. 
Her bearing was that of a prophetess. She 



BARBARA HECK. 149 



spoke under the afflatus of the Holy Spirit with 
such solemnity and power that his excuses 
were all beaten down, and he consented again 
to preach, and to begin at once. Giving him 
no time to react or recede from his promise, 
she opened her own house, went out and 
brought in four persons, she making the fifth. 
They sung and prayed and he preached. Then 
he enrolled them in a class and met them 
weekly — a happy circumstance for the little 
band who were making a fresh start in serving 
God. The Christian life is not likely to ravel 
and disintegrate when the conserving, strength- 
ening power of the class-meeting is wisely and 
diligently employed. Embury's house proved 
too small for the hungry souls that were eager 
for the gospel; a larger room was procured, 
and without any compensation he preached 
to them a free and full salvation. The rent of 
the room was met by the gratuitous contribu- 
tions of the people. Two small classes were 
soon formed, and the machinery of a regular 
Methodist society was put into operation. It 
is a significant fact that the next place at which 
we hear of Embury's preaching is the alms- 
house, where the Lord's poor heard the gospel 
with gladness of heart. Preaching to the poor 
will be one of the credentials of a true Meth- 



150 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



odist preacher as long as Methodism has a mis- 
sion to mankind. 

The work grew rapidly. Captain Webb had 
come from Albany in his flaming scarlet uni- 
form, and was stared at and listened to by the 
delighted crowds. The singing was of the 
kind that stirred their hearts — Charles Wes- 
ley's inspired lyrics being sung to tunes that 
rang like the peals of golden trumpets. The 
fellowship was hearty, for fashion had not then 
invaded the sanctuary, nor had the icy breath 
of pride congealed the warm current of broth- 
erly love in Christian hearts. 

All felt the need of a larger house. Our 
good mother in Israel had a dream. True, 
trusting heart! her waking thought shaped 
that nightly dream. But who will say that 
such a soul even in sleep could not be respon- 
sive to the touch of the Spirit? There have 
been such dreamers all along. She saw in 
her vision a large house, two stories high, built 
of stone, and she heard the words, "J, the Lord, 
will do it.'' Doubtless some smiled when she 
told her dream, but the idea had taken hold of 
her and mastered her. It took hold of many 
others. After two days of solemn prayer and 
fasting the scheme for the new church was 
adopted. Captain Webb led the subscriptions 



BARBARA HECK. 



151 



with the sum of thirty pounds; the paper was 
circulated freely; the names were obtained of 
nearly two hundred and fifty persons of all 
sorts, from the mayor and some of the regular 
clergy down to the Negroes without a surname. 
The house was built — Embury, who was a skill-- 
ful carpenter, doing a good part of the work. 
The building was of stone, faced with blue 
plaster, sixty feet by forty-two. It was a glad 
day when Embury stood for the first time in 
the pulpit which his own hands had made, and 
preached the dedicatory sermon from Hosea x. 
12 : " Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap 
in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it 
is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain 
righteousness upon you." It was called Wes- 
ley Chapel — "the first in the world that ever 
bore that name." There was no gladder heart 
that day than that of the woman whose dream 
had thus come to pass. 

The exact date of her death is not known. 
The gaze of the world at this time was directed 
to the more conspicuous actors upon the stage 
of human action. "She trained a pious fam- 
ily, and died in great peace," is the simple 
record of the Methodist historian. A volume 
could not say more. 

A plump, well-shaped, elastic figure; a face 



152 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



motherly and yet almosfc girlish in its joyous- 
ness of expression; features small and good, the 
nose just enough upturned to be becoming in 
a woman; eager, sparkling eyes with graceful- 
ly arched eyebrows; luxuriant dark-brown hair 
parted over a beautiful forehead and covering 
a small, well-formed head, wearing a bonnet 
coal-scuttle in shape yet not ungraceful in its 
effect; the whole giving you the impression of 
a nature thoroughly womanly and yet with a 
great reserve force of energy, passion, and 
power — Barbara Heck, "the mother of Amer- 
ican Methodism," returns our reverent and 
affectionate gaze with a look that seems to ex- 
press her wonder that by simply doing her 
duty she has been given a place among the 
immortals. 







Jesse liee. 

TALWART, shrewd, dauntless, 
witty, eloquent Jesse Lee! He 
was so human that we love him 
heartily; he was so true that we 
believe in him fully; he was so 
grand a man that we yield him an admiration 
that only increases as the lapsing years throw 
around his noble figure their softening perspec- 
tive. He came within a single vote of being 
made a bishop; but he is taller as he stands 
in his own unique individuality, without the 
office, than his less gifted but successful com- 
petitor on his official pedestal. With a frame 
of iron, the bonhomie of the typical Old Vir- 
ginian, the sharpness of the typical Yankee, 
the rough-and-ready adaptation of the stump- 
orator, and the uncooling fervor of a soul in 
continual communion with God, he was just 
the instrument needed for the great work to 
which he was called — a work which took him 
North, South, East, and West, and demanded 
the exhibition of qualities as varied as the ele- 
ments that composed the population of the 

(153) 



154 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



country, and a power of endurance possible 
only to the possessor of an iron will and nerves 
of steel. 

He was born in Prince George county, Va., 
in 1758, of a good family. This was a time 
of religious depression in Virginia. The pul- 
pit had no power, and the people had lost re- 
spect for a clergy most of whom were lifeless 
formalists, and many of whom were more or 
less tainted with the prevalent vices of the 
period. But there is one name that to this 
day seems to us like a green spot in this des- 
ert of religious declension. It is that of Dev- 
ereaux Jarratt. He was a minister of the 
Church of England, then the established re- 
ligion in Virginia. He was ordained in Lon- 
don in 1763, and came back to Virginia that 
year. He had caught the spirit of the new 
movement that was stirring and transform- 
ing the religious life of the British kingdom. 
His was a character of extraordinary beauty; 
his ministry was apostolic in its spirit, and its 
fruits made all the region round about bloom 
as the garden of the Lord. He preached ^Ye 
or six times a week, and traveled over a cir- 
cuit five or six hundred miles in extent. The 
churches were crowded; where only seven or 
eight persons had partaken of the holy sacra- 



JESSE LEE 155 



ment multitudes penitently bowed at their al- 
tars to receive the memorials of the death and 
passion of the Son of God. It was a genuine 
revival of religion; many souls were converted 
— among them Nathaniel Lee, the father of 
the subject of this sketch. The conversion of 
the son soon followed that of the father. The 
boy had been previously taught the forms of 
devotion and the catechism. He was awak- 
ened by the remark made by his father: ''If a 
man's sins tvere forgiven him, he would know 
itr The words were as a nail in a sure place. 
" They took hold of my mind," he says, " and I 
pondered them in my heart." His mental dis- 
tress was intense, for it was that genuine con- 
viction by the Holy Spirit under which the 
pains of hell get hold of a sinner's soul. He 
fled to the solitude of the woods, he prayed in 
the open fields, he wept at times and at others 
grieved because he could not weep. For four 
weeks he kept up the struggle. One morning, 
while earnestly praying, the blessing came. 
"My whole frame," he writes, "was in a tremor 
from head to foot, and my soul enjoyed sweet 
peace. The pleasure I then felt was indescrib- 
able." Concealing the blessing, he partially 
lost it until, renewing his importunities with 
God, he received such a revelation of light and 



156 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



love as left no room for doubt in his rejoicing 
soul. 

The family soon after united with the Meth- 
odists, who had been organized into a society 
under the pastoral care of Eobert Williams, 
the apostle of Virginia Methodism — the first 
Methodist preacher in America that married, 
the first that located, the first that died. The 
family residence was opened for preaching, 
and became one of the regular appointments 
of the newly formed circuit. The bright and 
ardent youth was powerfully and beneficially 
impressed by the Methodist preachers into 
whose society he was thus thrown. They were 
men of God, full of faith and the Holy Ghost. 
They preached a present, free, and full salva- 
tion, and their glowing zeal, consistent lives, 
and joyful experience attested the truth of 
their teachings. Revivals kindled and spread 
all over that region of country. Asbury him- 
self came and took part in the work, and the 
excellent Jarratt — the connecting link between 
the darkness and deadness of uniformity and 
the new era of light and life — lent a helping 
hand, preaching, meeting the classes, holding 
love-feasts, and administering the Lord's Sup- 
per. Benedictions on his memory! There is 
at this hour a purer, sweeter life in thousands 



JESSE LEE. 157 



of Yirginia homes because of liim, and the 
leaven of his evangelical influence still abides 
in the Church of which he was a burning and 
shining light in the days of its darkest eclipse. 
Formed amid such associations and influences, 
the religious life of young Lee developed rap- 
idly and healthfully. In his eighteenth year 
he modestly but gratefully claims that he had 
the witness in himself that his soul was filled 
with the perfect love that casteth out all fear 
■ — and it seems certain that at this time he did 
receive fuller revelations of spiritual truth, 
and entered into a deeper experience of the 
things of God. Despite his youth, and a na- 
tive diffidence that gave him much trouble at 
the start, he soon began to take an active part 
in the re^dvals that were sweeping like prairie- 
fires over the land. In his journal we find 
this significant entry: "March 8, 1778. — I gave 
my first exhortation at Benjamin Doles's." His 
ministerial evolution henceforth was rapid. 
He is next heard from as a class- leader in 
North Carolina, whither he had gone to man- 
age the farm of a widowed kinswoman. Soon 
he was holding prayer-meetings in the neigh- 
borhood, and his powerful and pathetic exhor- 
tations melted the hearts of many. When he 
went back to visit his parents at the close of 



158 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the year, lie was fairly launched upon the cur- 
rent that was to bear him on to the end. "In 
the close of the year," he says, " I went to visit 
my friends in Virginia, and was at meeting 
with them in different places, and exhorted 
them publicly, and with much earnestness, to 
flee from the wrath to come, and prepare for a 
better world. On Christmas-day we had a 
precious love-feast at my father's, where the 
Christians were highly favored of the Lord, and 
greatly comforted together in hearing each oth- 
er tell of the goodness of God to their souls." 
It was a trying episode to him when he was 
drafted into the army in 1780. As a Christian 
and preacher of the gospel he felt that he 
could not fight, and so he calmly declined to 
handle a gun, saying he could not kill a man 
with a clear conscience. He was put under 
gaard, but deported himself with such Chris- 
tian zeal, dignity, and good sense that the sol- 
diers' hearts were won to him, and a rich field 
of usefulness opened to him in the camp. It 
was Saturday night when he was put under 
confinement, a Baptist preacher sharing his 
captivity. "After dark," he says, "I told the 
guard we must pray before we slept." After 
the Baptist brother had led the devotions, Lee 
told the people if they would come out early 



JESSE LEE. 159 



in the morning he would pray with them. The 
soldiers brought him straw to sleep on, and 
offered him their blankets and great-coats for 
covering. He slept well, and says he felt "re- 
markably happy in God." The prayer-meet- 
ing was held next morning. "As soon as it 
was light," he says, "I was up and began to 
sing; some hundreds of people assembled and 
joined with me, and we made the plantation 
ring with the songs of Zion. We then knelt 
down and prayed; and while I was praying 
my soul was happy in God; I wept much and 
prayed loud, and many of the poor soldiers 
also wept." Later in the day he preached 
with great effect. He was, by the kindness of 
the colonel, exempted from other duty and 
put to driving a baggage-wagon, which he 
could do without any scruples of conscience. 
The army had penetrated into South Carolina 
with a view of forming a junction with Gen- 
eral Gates, but the disastrous defeat of that offi- 
cer near Camden spread dismay over the camp, 
and a retreat was ordered. On this retreat he 
found the roads thronged with men, women, 
and children flying before the enemy. The 
colonel rode to the side of the non-combatant 
soldier, and pointing to the defenseless crowd, 
some of whom were wounded, said: "Well, 



160 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Lee, don't you think you could fight now?^^ 
" I told him," he says, " I could fight ivith switches^ 
but I could not kill a man." (Christendom 
will reach this altitude by and by, and Chris- 
tian men will cease to kill their fellows.) He 
was honorably discharged in October, and took 
a straight line of march on foot to his father's 
house in Virginia. Others were left to fight 
the battles for American freedom — there was 
a different and a higher work waiting for him. 
He now felt powerfully impelled to give him- 
self wholly to the ministry, but hesitated from 
distrust of his fitness. With charming sim- 
plicity he tells us of an expedient that occurred 
to his mind for the settlement of the question 
that agitated his soul. He had thought of 
marrying. At that time matrimony was con- 
sidered an effectual bar to the itinerancy. 
When a preacher married, he "desisted from 
traveling," or located. "I finally concluded," 
he says, "that I would change my state, sup- 
posing I should then be freed from these ex- 
ercises. But when I made the attempt, I con- 
tinued to pray, and pray in earnest, that if it 
was the will of God that I ever should be called 
to the itinerant field, I might not succeed, but 
by the intervention of some means be prevent- 
ed." His prayer was answered — h6 was "pre- 



JESSE LEE. 161 



vented." The woman lie loyecl married some- 
body else, and he wedded the Church for time 
and eternity, and his spiritual children became 
a great company. How he took this turn in 
his affairs is not known, but he says that "mat- 
ters turned out for his spiritual advantage." 
Doubtless they did. 

He attended the Conference at Ellis's Meet- 
ing-house, in Sussex county, Ya., held in April, 
1772. Asbury had his eye on the tall and 
shapely young man. "I am going to enlist 
Brother Lee," he said to a group of preachers 
standing near. "What bounty do you give?" 
asked one of them. "Grace here, and glory 
hereafter," answered the heroic and laconic 
bishop. He was soon regularly in the field. 
He traveled and preached in North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jer- 
sey, and New York. Great multitudes of peo- 
ple flocked to hear him. He was both a son 
of thunder and a son of consolation. He 
preached the terrors of the law with such in- 
tensity of feeling and such energy of delivery 
that strong men fell prostrate while he was 
speaking. He wept over lost sinners with such 
a mighty grief that the hardest hearts melted 
and yielded to be saved by grace alone. In 
the best sense of the word he was a revivalist; 
11 



162 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the devotion of the Church was kindled into a 
brighter flame at his coming, and sinners were 
saved by scores and hundreds. He spent a 
month with Bishop Asbury in South Carolina 
in 1785 — a memorable epoch in his history, 
both because of the direct influence received 
by him from this intimate association with 
that extraordinary man, and because it was 
while on this tour that he met a Massachusetts 
man who gave him such an account of New 
England as excited within him an irrepressible 
desire to go thither with the gospel according 
to Methodism. 

In 1789 the event occurred which marked an 
epoch in his own life and in the history of 
American Methodism. He was appointed to 
New England. He went at once and opened 
his mission at Norwalk, in Connecticut. Un- 
able to get a house in which to preach, he took 
his stand in the street, and preached from John 
iii. 7: "Ye must be born again." That was the 
key-note. He went from place to place, and 
there was a great stir. When the acid of his 
Arminian theology touched the alkali of the 
old Puritan dogmas, great was the efferves- 
cence. The churches were usually closed 
against him; but what cared he? His bugle- 
voice was better than any bell in gathering a 



JESSE LEE. 163 



crowd to hear the gospel in the streets. The 
freedom of the open air suited the genius of 
the natural orator who touched every chord of 
emotion with a master-hand, melting his hear- 
ers to tears, or convulsing them with irrepress- 
ible laughter at will. "It was agreed," says 
one who heard him, " that such a man had not 
visited New England since the days of White- 
field," He was often treated rudely, but his 
imperturbable good nature, inimitable ready 
wit, and unfailing tact, and powerful logic en- 
abled him first to conciliate and then to con- 
vince opposers. He reached Boston July 9, 
1790. Presumptuous man! to think that Bos- 
ton would hear a Virginia backwoodsman. No 
door was opened to him. Bat he had a mes- 
sage for Boston, and must deliver it. So he 
gave notice that he would preach on the Com- 
mon on the afternoon of the next Sunday. 
Borrowing a table, he placed it at a convenient 
spot under the old elrii, and at the appointed 
hour he mounted it and began to sing. A 
crowd collected. Kneeling on his table, he 
offered a short and earnest prayer. Two or 
three thousand persons stood before him. They 
listened quietly, many being deeply affected. 
Boston then, as in later times, was not indis- 
posed to give a hospitable reception to new 



164 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ideas. The ideas presented that day took deep 
root in the minds of his hearers, and, more 
than all other influences, have contributed to 
save New England in its recoil from hyper- 
Augustinianism, from taking the fatal plunge 
into utter skepticism. The genius of the 
preacher and the charm of his doctrine took 
strong hold upon the people. He continued 
to preach to them during the greater part of 
the summer, and at length a Methodist house 
of worship was erected in a humble alley of 
the town. This house was built with money 
that Lee had begged in the South, and was 
paid to the builders with his own hands. This 
was the first Methodist Church in New En- 
gland. New England Methodism is thus, in 
some sense, the child of Southern Methodism. 
May the white banner of peace float over them 
forever ! 

The fame of Mr. Lee spread all over the 
continent. He was often the companion of 
Asbury in his great episcopal and evangelical 
journeyings. Though differing in opinion at 
times, and coming once or twice into sharp 
collision, there was a strong bond of mutual 
admiration and affection between the senten- 
tious, keen-sighted, incisive bishop and his 
large-bodied, handsome, genial, and eloquent 



JESSE LEE. 165 



companion in travel. They were supplement- 
ary to each other, and their coming was every- 
where the signal for quickened movement and 
mighty victories. 

At the third General Conference of the 
Church, held in Baltimore in May, 1800, an- 
other bishop was to be elected. Mr. What- 
coat and Mr. Lee were the candidates. On 
the first ballot there was no election; on the 
second there was a tie; on the third Mr. What- 
coat was elected by a majority of four votes. 
Lee's defeat was a disappointment, but left no 
cloud upon his soul. "I believe," he writes, 
"we never had so good a General Conference 
before; we had the greatest speaking and the 
greatest union of affections that we ever had 
on a like occasion." A soul as sweet as his 
does not acidulate when honor falls on another. 

With ripened powers and unflagging zeal, 
he continued his work, preaching in New York 
and Philadelphia; revisiting New England; 
doing the work of a presiding elder in Vir- 
ginia; participating in the first camp-meet- 
ings; revisiting the South; forming the first 
society in Savannah; serving as chaplain of 
the House of Representatives and of the United 
States Senate; "^Titing a history of the Meth- 
odists; rendering valuable service in success- 



166 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ive General Conferences; and in many other 
ways lie impressed his individuality on his 
generation. 

He died September 12, 1816. His last text 
was 2 Peter iii. 18: " Grow in grace." The ser- 
mon was preached at a camp-meeting on the 
eastern shore of Maryland. For several days 
before his death his soul was filled with holy 
joy. "Give my respects to Bishop McKen- 
dree," he said, " and tell him I die in love with 
all the preachers." Among his last words 
were, "Halleluiah! halleluiah! Jesus reigns! " 
His dust sleeps in the old Methodist burying- 
ground at Baltimore, where an elegant shaft 
of Scotch granite, erected by his spiritual de- 
scendants in Boston, marks the sacred spot. 

Towering in physical stature as an intellect- 
ual endowment above his contemporaries, deep- 
chested, straight as a yellow-poplar, with a face 
open as the day, an eye that flashed with fire 
or swam in tears according to the mood of the 
moment, with a kingly head; movements both 
in and out of the pulpit at once graceful and 
energetic; a voice of great power and extraor- 
dinary melody; and withal the orator's inspi- 
ration with its sudden flashes of illumination 
and tremendous bursts of passion — before us 
stands Jesse Lee, the full-grown Virginian, the 



JESSE LEE. 167 



orator whose declamation stirred and whose 
pathos melted multitudes; the genius whose 
bubbling wit charmed every audience and re- 
freshed every social circle; the God-commis- 
sioned apostle, who planted Methodism in New 
England to bloom in beauty and produce ever- 
increasing harvests as long as the snows shall 
lay v/hite upon its mountains or the stars be 
reflected in the waters o£ its lakes. 






William MdKendFee. 



HILE many once brilliant lights 
have gone out, or are fading from 
the skies, he shines like a fixed 
star with undimmed splendor. 
He was a man of God. The 
one quality that lifted him above the level of 
common men was his goodness. He walked 
among his fellows in the majesty of the most 
exalted Christian manhood. Living in habit- 
ual intercourse with his Lord, he diffused the 
aroma of heaven as he moved among men. It 
was not merely what he said and did, but what 
he was, that gave him leadership among his 
contemporaries and the love and admiration of 
posterity. He let his light shine before men 
— the reflected light of the indwelling Christ 
• — and they glorified God in him. 

He was a rounded man, equal to all occa- 
sions. Drawn on to any extent for any service, 
the draft was honored. All who came in con- 
tact with him received that impression of re- 
served power that so often attends true great- 
ness. He dominated men who Avere seemingly 

iiG8:i 




WILLIAM McKENDREE. 



WILLIAM McKENDREE. 169 



his superiors. They were more eloquent at 
times, they were wittier, they were more orig- 
inal. But somehow they fell to the rear, and 
he went to the front. Like a mountain he 
stood with unseamed bosom and sun-lit sum- 
mit in the midst of lesser heights with sharp- 
ened cones and fissured sides. 

He was a true ecclesiastical statesman. He 
knew how to wait on the growth of an idea, 
and he knew when the critical moment came 
to crystallize it into law. His aim was sure, 
and his hand was steady as he pulled the trig- 
ger. He knew the difference between legisla- 
tive empiricism and the healthy development 
of a Church polity based on sound constitu- 
tional principles. His hand put in place heavy 
stones in the solid masonry of Methodism, and 
there they will remain. Methodism made him, 
and he in turn was, under God, a chief instru- 
ment in making Methodism what it is. Ven- 
erable servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and 
father of American Methodism, his fame bright- 
ens and his influence grows stronger as the 
swift-passing days bring the Church toward 
the close of its first Centenary. 

He was born in King William county, Va., 
July 6, 1757. His family was respectable and 
moral, and remarkable for their strong domes- 



170 CENTENARY CAIVfEOS. 



tic affections. We get a glimpse of the moth- 
er, who was an invalid for twenty years, and it 
is the image of a woman of singular sweetness 
of temper, good sense, and acute sensibilities. 
She left her impress upon the son, to whom 
her memory was precious through life. The 
father was a quiet, good man. He made no 
noise in the world, but did his duty in a pri- 
vate sphere, and then died and went up to reap 
the reward of fidelity promised by his Lord. 

The first deep religious impressions were 
made upon the mind of the thoughtful boy 
from reading the Bible. "A frivolous school- 
master," he says " laughed me out of all my seri- 
ousness." The Methodists came into the neigh- 
borhood, and his father and mother were con- 
verted. He says he was at that time " deeply 
convinced of sin, and resolved to set out and 
serve the Lord." But his good impressions 
wore off, and he became more worldly than be- 
fore. A severe sickness checked his "thought- 
less career." While lying at the point of death 
this question came into his mind: "If the Lord 
would raise you up and convert your soul, 
would you be willing to go and preach the gos- 
pel?" At this, he tells us, "nature shrunk, 
will refused, and I trembled when I found 
myself indisposed to prompt obedience." He 



WILLIAM McKENDREE. 171 



was raised from tlie jaws of death, and as liis 
strength returned he lost sight of his danger, 
his resolution weakened, and he again relapsed 
into indifference. 

The metal of his nature was hard, and it 
needed a hotter fire to melt it. The fitting in- 
strument at length appeared. The mighty 
hand of John Easter w^as laid on him. On a 
certain Tuesday in 1787 he went to hear the 
great revivalist. The text was John iii. 19-22. 
" The word reached my heart," he says. " From 
this time I had no peace of mind; I was com- 
pletely miserable. My heart was broken. A 
vieAv of God's forbearance, and of the debasing 
sin of ingratitude, of which I had been guilty 
in grieving the Spirit of God, overwhelmed 
me with confusion. Now my conscience roared 
like a lion. I concluded that I had committed 
the unpardonable sin, and had thoughts of 
giving up all for lost. But in the evening of 
the third day deliverance came. While Mr. 
Easter was preaching, I was praying as well 
as I could, for I was almost ready to despair 
of mercy. Suddenly doubts and fears fled, 
hope sprung up in my soul, and the burden 
was removed. I knew that God was love- 
that there w^as mercy even for me, and I re- 
joiced in silence.'" His cautious mind led him 



172 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



to analyze closely the evidences that lie was 
truly a converted man, and lie was comforted 
with the witness of the Spirit. A larger bless- 
ing soon followed. " One morning," he says, 
" I walked into the field, and while I was mns- 
iiig such an overwhelming power of the Di- 
vine Being overshadowed me as I had never 
experienced before. Unable to stand, I sunk 
to the ground, more than filled with transport. 
My cup ran over, and I shouted aloud." Tided 
over thus into the deep water of a full salvation, 
his glad soul was swept out into the ocean of 
divine love, and never was stranded among the 
shallows again. 

After painful misgivings and haltings, under 
an irresistible constraint of duty, he began to 
preach the gospel. 

Those were wonderful times in Virginia. 
That wonderful man, John Easter, swept from 
circuit to circuit like an evangelical whirlwind. 
The very earth seemed almost to tremble un- 
der the tread of this giant, whose faith, Elijah- 
like, seemed to control the elements them- 
selves. Great multitudes were turned to the 
Lord. In Sussex Circuit about one thousand 
six hundred souls were converted; in Bruns- 
wick, about one thousand eight hundred; in 
Amelia, about eight hundred; and other lo- 



WILLIAM McKENDREE. 173 



calities were shaken as by a spiritual earth- 
quake. 

Under such conditions the young man took 
his first lessons as a preacher. He was ad- 
mitted on trial at the Conference held at Pe- 
tersburg, Ya., the same year (1788), and he 
was appointed to Mecklenburg as his first cir- 
cuit. For forty-eight years he traveled and 
preached. He began timidly, but he "saw 
fruit of his labors," and rapidly developed 
into a preacher of extraordinary ability. His j 

gentle spirit and agreeable manners concili- 
ated the good-will of all classes, while the 
depth of his piety made him an angel of light 
wherever he went. He spent much time each 
day on his knees, in reading the Bible, and in 
prayer. A single quotation from his diary 
will reveal the secret of his power Avith men 
and with God: "Wednesday, Sept. 22, 1790.— 
Early in the morning, spent an hour on my 
knees in fervent prayer, reading God's Word, 
and praising my adorable Saviour. It was a 
time of heavenly joys to my soul. From ten 
o'clock A.M. to half -past one o'clock I spent in 
wrestling, agonizing prayer. But surely God 
and his holy ones were all around me, heaven 
burst into my bosom, and glory filled my soul." 
Thus was kindled and fed the flamo that 



174 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



burned so brightly for nearly half a century, 
and whose illumination still gilds the sky. 
From the Blue Ridge to the sea-board he trav- 
eled and preached from year to year. Every- 
where the Lord was with him in saving powder, 
and the Church was edified and a multitude of 
souls converted. The only deflection from a 
straight line in his career was when he came 
for a short time under the influence of the 
gifted, erratic, and ill-fated James O'Kelly, by 
whom he was prejudiced against Asbury, and 
nearly turned away from his work as a preacher. 
It was characteristic of him that he informed 
Asbury that he had lost confidence in him. 
And Asbury's reply was no less characteristic 
of him: "I do not wonder at that, brother; 
sometimes we can see with our eyes ; sometimes 
we can see only with our ears." Transparent, 
courageous souls ! they knew each other better 
afterward, and became indissolubly united in 
love and in labor, as they are in the remem- 
brance of a grateful Church. 

In 1800 Asbury, who, by close contact with 
him, had come to know his worth, placed him 
in charge of the work in the West. The hand 
of God seems plainly visible in this event. It 
was during that year that the great revival in 
the Western country broke out — a work the 



WILLIAM McKENDREE. 175 



most extraordinary in some of its features in 
the whole history of the Church of God. Like 
a tidal- wave the revival rolled over the land. 
Vast crowds of deeply excited people attended 
the meetings, in which scenes of indescriba- 
ble excitement were enacted. Camp-meetings 
sprung up as a necessity. With overwhelm- 
ing power the revival spread, until the entire 
West was ablaze. The cool head and strong 
hand of the new presiding elder were needed. 
To guide the great work without crippling it, 
to share its enthusiasm, and yet restrain its 
tendencies toward fanaticism, was the provi- 
dential function to which he was called. His 
sound judgment, strong will, and unfailing 
equanimity enabled him to rule these elements 
that were in such wild commotion. The work 
was organized and enlarged under his skill- 
ful and energetic administration. Nothing di- 
verted him from his service for the Church. 
He never married, having, as he said, " no time 
for it." His undoubting faith, his unflagging 
energy, his great pulpit power, his purity of 
life, and his example of complete self-abnega- 
tion for Christ's sake, made him the apostle 
of Methodism in the West. His wise and far- 
reaching plans provided for the development 
of the work on lines of permanent progress. 



176 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



He was elected to the office of bishop May 
12, 1808. The election took place under the 
emotion excited by a sermon preached by him 
that was "like the sudden bursting of a cloud 
surcharged with Avater." Asburj^, who was 
present, was heard to say that the sermon 
would make him a bishop — a result we may 
believe that was not unwelcome to him. Dur- 
ing the period of twenty-seven years he filled 
this office his history is so identified with the 
history of the Church that the one could not 
be written without including the other. With 
Asbury he led the rapidly increasing hosts of 
Methodism until the death of the first great 
itinerant bishop laid upon his strong shoul- 
ders the burden of undisputed leadership. 
The Church grew and prospered, and he grew 
in the love and reverence of the people until he 
was everywhere greeted by them as a father. 

He made his last appearance in the General 
Conference in 1832. "Leaning on his staff, 
his once tall and manly form now bent with 
age and infirmity, his eyes suffused with tears 
his voice faltering with emotion, he exclaimed: 
'Let all things be done without strife or vain- 
glory, and try to keep the unity of the Spirit 
in the bonds of peace! My brethren and chil- 
dren, love 07ie another.'' Then spreading forth 



LT" 



WILLIAM McKENDREE. 177 



his trembling hands, and raising his eyes to 
heaven, he pronounced, in faltering and af- 
fectionate accents, the apostolic benediction. 
Slowly and sadly he left the house to return 
no more." ^ 

He preached his last sermon in Nashville, 
Tenn., November 23, 1834, in "McKendree 
Church." At his brother's residence, in Sum- 
ner county, he died March 5, 1835. With al- 
most his latest breath he said, "All is well," 
and the chariot of God bore him over the ever- 
lasting hills. 

Nearly six feet high, erect, well-proportioned, 
with forehead high and broad, full, dark, ex- 
pressive eyes, complexion of singular purity, 
all his features finely molded and harmonious; 
clad in a round-breasted coat, white neck-tie, 
a white, broad-brimmed hat; with a voice soft 
yet penetrating, strangely persuasive and mu- 
sical — that is one picture of William McKen- 
dree, the first native-born American Methodist 
bishop, the consecrated believer, the inspired 
preacher, the wise legislator, the efiicient ad- 
ministrator. There is another — the man of 
God on his knees with his open Bible before 
him, his rapt face illumined with the light re- 
flected from Immanuel's face. 
12 




lANT - FEAMED, lion - hearted, 
burly John Easter! His colossal 
figure towered grandly as he trod 
the stage for a little season with 
the tread of a king. He was the 
first, and in some respects the mightiest, of all 
the mighty men of God who were the indige- 
nous product and powerful propagandists of 
the new movement that was destined to give a 
new impulse and new direction to the religious 
life of this nation. Two of the bishops of 
American Methodism — William McKendree 
and Enoch George — were his spiritual chil- 
dren, and they bore the impress of his master- 
spirit to the end of their lives. 

The effect of his preaching was indeed mi- 
raculous. Signs and wonders followed the word 
that fell from his burning lips. No greater 
marvels of divine power have been seen since 
the crucified and risen Christ gave the promise 
of the Spirit than attended the ministry of this 
man whose breath of fire ignited the elements 
(178) 



L- 



JOHN EASTER. 179 

that were ready to kindle into holy combustion 
in that notable day of the Lord. 

He was born in Mecklenburg county, Va. — 
the exact date o£ his birth is not known. His 
parents were among the earliest Methodists on 
the Brunswick Circuit, and "Easter's Meeting- 
house " perpetuates their memory. Of his 
conversion and call to the ministry we have 
no exact record. 'He comes upon the scene 
suddenly, like another Amos, with the word 
of God burning in his soul. He wrote no dia- 
ries, and took no pains to hand down his name 
and deeds to after times. 

During the nine years of his traveling min- 
istry — beginning in 1782 and ending in 1791 — 
he was in a continuous revival. Thousands of 
souls were converted by his instrumentality. 
There was a strange power about him. His 
touch left its impress for life. He prayed at 
the bedside of young McKendree — "not as 
men generally pray," said that great man, 
"but in a manner peculiar to himself "^ — and 
under that prayer the soul of the bishop that 
was to be was "filled with joy," and into his 
life entered a new element of power that it 
never lost. Enoch George came in contact 
with him, and was molded anew, and started 
upon his grand career. 



180 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Yast crowds attended his preaching, and oft- 
en as he was speaking " the foundations of the 
place would seem to be shaken, and the people 
to be moved like the trees of the forest when 
shaken by a mighty tempest." At a single 
four-days' meeting held by him four hundred 
souls were converted to God. Entire neigh- 
borhoods were brought under his revival pow- 
er, old and young, rich and poor, being swept 
into its mighty current. "When Mr. Easter 
spoke," says Bishop George, "his word was 
clothed with power, and the astonished multi- 
tude trembled, and many fell down and cried 
aloud. Some fell near me, and one almost 
on me; and when I attempted to fly I found 
myself unable." This power that prostrated 
strong men was the power of God unto salva- 
tion ; for it raised them to newness of life, and 
made the Virginia forests and fields vocal with 
the rejoicings of glad souls born of God and 
bound for heaven. Yea, it was the power of 
God, for the fruits were abiding. The mighty 
voice of the great preacher is hushed, and he 
sleeps in a neglected grave, but his work still 
multiplies and perpetuates itself. The souls 
he touched touched thousands of other souls. 
The revival-wave that rose so high under his 
marvelous ministry rolled westward until it 



JOHN EASTER. 181 

reached the great Mississippi Valley. It still 
rolls on, and will roll as long as the waters of 
the Cumberland flow on to meet and mingle 
with those of the beautiful Ohio. 

The power of this man was the power of 
faith. He took God at his word, seeing no 
place for doubt where he had given a promise. 
His seeming audacity w^as startling to many — 
"instead of praying," it was said, "he com- 
manded God, as if the Lord was to obey man." 
Bishop McKendree relates this illustrative in- 
cident, of which he was an eye-witness: " While 
preaching to a large concourse of people in 
the open air, at a time of considerable drought, 
it began to thunder, a cloud approached, and 
drops of rain fell. He stopped preaching, 
and besought the Lord to withhold the rain 
until evening — to pour out his Spirit, convert 
the people, and then water the earth. He then 
resumed his subject. The appearance of rain 
increased — the people began to get uneasy — 
some moved to take off their saddles; when, in 
his peculiar manner, he told the Lord that 
'there were sinners there that must be con- 
verted or be damned,' and prayed that he 
would 'stop the bottles of heaven until the 
evening.' He closed his prayer, and assured us, 
in the most confident manner, that we might 



182 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



keep our seats — that it would not rain to wet 
us — that 'souls are to be converted here to- 
day — my God assures me of it, and you may 
believe it.' The congregation became com- 
posed, and we did not get wet; for the clouds 
parted, and although there was a fine rain on 
both sides of us, there was none where we 
were until night. The Lord's Spirit was poured 
out in an uncommon degree, many were con- 
victed, and a considerable number professed 
to be converted that day."- Bullies who came 
to his meetings to make trouble were abashed 
and slunk off, or remained to pray and be con- 
verted. When threatened with personal vio- 
lence by one who brandished a club in his 
face, looking him straight in the eye, he calmly 
said: "I regard the spilling of my blood for 
the sake of Christ no more than the bite of a 
fly." The ruffian, cowed and crestfallen, left 
him. Scoffers were silenced, opposers were 
won to Christ, great fear fell upon the ungodly, 
and the victorious people of God rejoiced with 
exceeding joy. 

Having married a wife, he located in 1792 — ■ 
forced to do so to get bread for his family. 
This step cost the great-hearted preacher a 
keen pang; but he never lost his zeal. He was 
faithful and zealous to the end — " first for 



JOHN EASTER. 183 



souls, and second for bread," as lie himself 
puts it. 

A martyr-death closed his life. By over- 
taxing his strength in a protracted meeting in 
1801, he was stricken with incurable disease of 
the lungs, and in a little while his strong frame 
succumbed, the great, heroic heart ceased to 
throb, and the trumpet- voice that had thrilled 
assembled thousands with the message of sal- 
vation was tuned to the melody of the new 
song in glory. 







R©beF^ Williams. 



^i^^mM 


iiHIl 


— JH^'^SH 


~^^m 



E was the apostle of Methodism 
in North Carolina as well as Vir- 
ginia. In his spirit and methods 
he was typical of what North Car- 
olina Methodism is unto this day 
— modest, true, steady, not careful about var- 
nish on the surface, but fine-grained and sound 
through and through. He was the first Meth- 
odist preacher in America to print and sell 
books — and his spiritual descendants are still 
at it. He was the first Methodist preacher in 
America to marry — and his successors are still 
marrying. He was the first Methodist preacher 
in America to die — and it is needless to say that 
his successors keep on dying. His coming in- 
to a community was not attended with as much 
"observation " as some other men, but his foot- 
prints left a deeper and more lasting mark. 
He was an organizer — what he got he held, 
and what he held he molded into organic unity. 
The forces he brought together were drilled for 
occupancy and aggression. He was thus a true 
Methodist after the type of the founder of 
(184^ 



ROBERT WILLIAMS. 185 



Methodism. He worked as if he believed 
Methodism had come to this country to stay — 
and so it has done. From Cape Hatteras to 
Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, and from 
the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River in Vir- 
ginia, the spires of Methodist churches point 
to the skies, and the songs of a vast and con- 
stantly swelling host of Methodists ring out as 
they march on to the goal of the prophetic 
promise that through the agency of the living 
Church of the living Christ the gospel of the 
kingdom shall be preached to all nations, and 
then the end shall come. Steadfast, humble, 
toilsome, sweet-souled disciple of his Lord, 
he worked with no thought of fame or other 
earthly reward, but his name will kindle a 
glow in Christian hearts as long as Methodist 
men and women shall read the radiant pages 
that record the work and portray the nobility 
of their spiritual ancestry. 

He came from Ireland to America in 1769. 
He had been a local preacher, but he felt his 
heart burn with love for souls across the sea. 
Mr. Wesley, who seems to have discerned the 
true gold in his composition, gave him au- 
thority to preach in America. He sold his 
horse to pay his debts, and set sail for New 
York — his "outfit" consisting of "a pair of 



186 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



saddle-bags containing a few pieces of cloth- 
ing, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of milk." A 
pair of saddle-bags! the noblest device in the 
heraldry of Christianity, the badge of an or- 
der of knighthood whose members travel all 
the lands of earth to seek and save perishing 
souls. 

After preaching a little time in New York 
he started southward. He labored awhile with 
Strawbridge in Maryland, and next we find 
him in Norfolk, Yirginia. No house there 
was open to him. So, taking his stand on the 
court-house steps, he began to sing. A won- 
dering crowd gathered around him. When his 
song was ended he prayed, and then preached 
in such fashion that his hearers were amazed. 
Undaunted by difficulty, the faithful preacher 
continued to deliver his Master's message; the 
word took hold of the hearts of the people, and 
some were converted. Without delay a " soci- 
ety" was formed, and a church was built on 
or near the very spot where he first stood and 
sung and prayed and preached to the aston- 
ished rabble. 

He next went over to Portsmouth, where, 
standing under the shade of two persimmon- 
trees, he preached the first Methodist sermon 
in that town. A persimmon-blossom, white 



ROBERT WILLIAMS. 187 



and fragrant, might be taken as the symbol of 
the Methodism that has spread from these 
humble beginnings until it has filled all Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina with the odors of 
heaven. The word had free course in Ports- 
mouth; some souls were converted; a ware- 
house was fitted up as a preaching -place; 
Methodism took root there, and abides to this 
hour. 

In 1773 he went to Petersburg and "began 
to preach holiness of life." The people in 
Petersburg were not responsive to his message 
then and he could not tarry, for the word of 
the Lord was as a fire in his bones. Getting 
him a horse, he sallied forth into the adjacent 
country. God was with him. A wonderful 
work of grace broke out. The fire spread un- 
til it crossed the border into North Carolina, 
and from the James River to the Dan and the 
Eoanoke the country was wrapped in a holy 
conflagration. The sacred fires are yet burn- 
ing in all that beautiful region, and are fanned 
into a brighter flame by the hallowed and stir- 
ring memories of this Centenary year. 

The multitude of his converts were duly 
taken into the Church by the fervent yet me- 
thodical evangelist, and "Brunswick Circuit" 
was formed, covering a territory so extensive 



188 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



that three additional preachers were required 
to supply it next year. So mightily grew the 
word of God and prevailed under the ministry 
of this "plain, simple-hearted, pious man," 
whose best gift as a preacher was the inten- 
sity of the Christ-love that filled his trusting 
soul. Among his converts was a young man 
named Jesse Lee, whose volatile spirit was 
sobered and whose fiery heart was subdued by 
the power of God through the agency of this 
weeping prophet whose tears welled up from 
a heart yearning like that of his Lord over 
dying sinners. "It was common with him," 
says Lee, " after preaching, to ask most of the 
people some question about the welfare of 
their souls." The perfunctory preacher, if he 
should read this, will do w^ell to pause and 
ponder these words. 

Asbury, in his journal, under date of Balti- 
more, April, 1775, says: "I met with Brother 
Williams from Virginia, who gave me a great 
account of the work of God in those parts — 
five or six hundred soids justified hy faith, and 
five or six circuits formed.'' The italicized 
words give the key to the secret of the power 
and permanency of this man's work. His 
method was sound conversion and thorough 
organization. 



ROBERT WILLIAMS. 189 



Not content with what he could do directly, 
and with the instinct of a wise worker, he re- 
printed many of Mr. Wesley's books, " and 
spread them through the country," thus "giv- 
ing the people great light and understanding 
in the nature of the new birth and in the plan 
of salvation," as a contemporaneous writer ex- 
presses it. Thus, it is added, " he opened the 
way for the preachers to many places where 
they had never been before. 'i Lift your hats 
to the illustrious founder of the order of book- 
selling itinerants in America, whose saddle- 
bags were portable book- stores, and who in 
their journeyings sowed seeds from which the 
fair flowers of piety and goodness sprang up 
to bloom along their shining pathway! It is 
to be hoped that the succession in this line 
will never fail. 

He died peacefully September 26, 1775, and 
was buried by Bishop Asbury. No living per- 
son knows where to find his grave — every trace 
of it has been lost. But his dust sleeps in 
Virginia soil, and is watched by Him who is 
the resurrection and the life, and will come 
forth with a great company of his spiritual 
children in the day that shall bring the mani- 
festation of the sons of God. 



Ehilip BFMCie. 



p 


s^^Hli^^^s^ 





E was of Huguenot blood — a de- 
scendant of that exiled race whose 
story is one of the most pitiful in 
the annals of time. Black lines 
shotild inclose the page that tells 
of their massacre on St. Bartholomew's-day, Au- 
gust 24, 1572. Fair France that day sowed the 
wind, and has since reaped the whirlwind. 
She tore out her own heart when she put the 
noble Coligny and his fellow-believers to the 
sword, and drove the remnant, peeled and bro- 
ken, to other lands. It was a dark and tem- 
pestuous period, and though none can conceal 
from themselves this horror of history, the 
time has come when it can be viewed more 
calmly and more justly. There are signs vis- 
ible to the eye of Christian faith that the long 
punishment is nearly past, and the time at 
hand when a new heart is to be put into the 
new nation that was born on the day when 
the Empire went down and the German ban- 
ners waved in triumph over the field of Sedan, 
The Huguenots have been avenged. And may 
(190) 



.J 



PHILIP BRUCE. 191 



we not hope that a nobler revenge awaits them 
— that their descendants in all lands will yet 
take part in the work of giving the new France 
the gospel of Christ, which will be to her peo- 
ple a new gospel full of awakening and re= 
generative power? Some of these children of 
the Huguenots will read these lines; if they 
have the spirit of Christ, their hearts will soften 
as they read, and yearn for the spiritual redemp- 
tion of the great race to which they belong. 

He was born near King's Mountain, in North 
Carolina, December 25, 1755. The family name 
was De Bruise, but a Scotch school-teacher 
changed it to Bruce — which was more musical 
to his true Scottish ear. The family had found 
its way to those beautiful Carolina hills, then 
a wilderness, where they breathed the air of 
freedom, tilled the earth, and hunted and fished 
and frolicked as they pleased. When once 
started, moral deterioration in new settlements 
is rapid. Evolution is downward, not upward, 
in the absence of the regular ordinances of 
religion. So it was in all the region lying 
along the border-line between the two Caro- 
linas. Profanity, gambling, drunkenness, and 
kindred vices flourished. The regular clergy 
failed to penetrate into those then remote places, 
and even the forms of religion were disused. 



192 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



The march of the Methodists over the con- 
tinent had begun, and they took the King's 
Mountain country in their way. Though but 
a youth, Philip Bruce was one of the first to 
respond to their awakening touch. It is a lit- 
tle strange that no mention is made of the 
name of the preacher under whose ministry 
he was converted. No matter — it is written in 
that book from which nothing is omitted that 
enters into the life work of even the humblest 
servant of God. 

The conversion of the vivacious, quick-wit- 
ted youth was genuine — his whole nature and 
his whole life were turned to the Lord. It was 
soon evident that he had a call to the ministry. 
It is a touching chapter in his life that tells of 
his first converts — his own father and mother. 
He could not conceal the new joy that was in 
his soul, nor repress the loving solicitude he 
felt for their salvation. One evening while 
sitting around the fire he timidly spoke to them 
on the subject. His father trembled and wept; 
his mother too was deeply moved. " Father, 
pray with us," said the boy. "No; I cannot 
pray," said the old man, in a broken voice. 
He then asked his mother to pray, but she too 
felt herself unequal to the task, and urged 
him to do so. The three knelt together weep- 



PHILIP BRUCE. 193 



ing, and the boy lifted his gray-haired parents 
to God on the arms of his faith. That prayer 
was heard and answered; the father and mother 
were soon rejoicing with the son in a Saviour's 
love, and all were soon duly enrolled as Meth- 
odists. 

He started in his ministry in the good old 
way — as an exhorter — and his progress was 
rapid and steady. For thirty-six years he was 
a traveling preacher. His tough, elastic con- 
stitution endured hardships that would have 
broken down common men. His preaching 
was effective with all classes. He exhibited 
both power and polish in the pulpit. Lumi- 
nous in exposition and thrilling in hortatory 
appeal, he took captive both the understand- 
ings and the hearts of his hearers. He was 
noted for the shortness as well as the excel- 
lence of his sermons. "Now, Philip," said 
Bishop Asbury to him on one occasion before 
preaching, "I intend to pile up the brush to- 
night, and you must set it on fire." Asbury 
preached a plain, pointed, practical sermon, 
says the historian; "and when he had sat down 
Bruce arose and delivered a most powerful ex- 
hortation, which told with overwhelming effect 
on the congregation. The Bishop's brush-heap 
blazed at the touch of Philip's torch." His 
13 



194 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



mind grasped the philosophy of divine truth, 
and he acquired and used effectively a vast 
fund of useful knowledge. The canny school- 
master who had Scotticized his name had 
grounded him thoroughly in the elements of 
an academic education, and he built well on 
the foundation thus laid. His post-academic 
course was taken in the saddle. In the social 
circle he was fascinating, a favorite with the 
young and the old, the easy dignity of his 
bearing inspiring respect, and his gentle. Christ- 
like temper winning affectionate regard. He 
magnified his office as a presiding elder — he 
knew how to organize and employ the forces 
recruited under his ministry. Twice he nar- 
rowly escaped being elected bishop — missing 
ifc each time by only three votes. We may be 
sure he never sought the honor, and that his 
sunny soul was not clouded for a moment be- 
cause he failed to get it. 

He itinerated in North Carolina and Vir- 
ginia, revivals kindling and the Church strik- 
ing its roots deep wherever he went. He won 
the multitudes to himself and to his Lord, 
reaching both the highest and the humblest 
classes of society. 

In 1817 the infirmities of age compelled him 
to desist from regular work as a traveling 



PHILIP BRUCE. 195 



preacher. He ended his days in Tennessee, 
residing with his brother, Joel Bruce, in Giles 
county. He never married. There was an 
early experience in his life that looked in that 
direction, and it is believed that he carried a 
tender and sacred memory of a fair, sweet girl 
to his grave. But, fearing that marriage would 
hinder him in his work, he remained single 
for the kingdom of heaven's sake, taking for 
his bride the Church of Christ, laying his all 
at her feet with a glad heart. 

He died May 10, 1826. " He died," says one 
who was present, "not only in peace, but in 
triumph. For a whole night he could not 
sleep for joy — the Lord was with him, and 
blessed him mightily." His body was laid to 
rest in Tennessee soil among the breezy hills 
of Lincoln county. At a subsequent day the 
Virginia Conference, of which he continued to 
be a member until his death, erected a monu- 
ment to mark the sacred spot. 

Tall, erect, and graceful in carriage; com- 
plexion clear brunette; eyes black and brill- 
iant; a mouth and chin that gave a hint of 
will-power not easily called forth, and as diffi- 
cult to be resisted when fully roused; a nose a 
little too large for beauty, but indicative of 
character; a thin face, with features delicately 



196 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



chiseled; his countenance open and pleasing— 
this is Philip Bruce, the powerful logician, the 
exhorter whose burning appeals set all hearts 
in a blaze, .the leader in the Church who led so 
wisely and persuasively that he won his way 
where all others failed. His name will live in 
the heart of the Church as long as it shall 
kindle with admiration and love at the con- 
templation of unselfish goodness and uncal- 
culating heroism. 




= 


i 


^ 



§©pe ImII. 

E was a man of large mold — o£ 
powerful physique, and a giant in 
intellect. He possessed tlie req- 
uisites for leadership — clear and 
quick perception, courage that 
nothing could daunt, and that utter abandon 
in devotion to what he loved that awoke re- 
sponsive enthusiasm in the souls of others. 
He led by divine right — his credentials were 
stamped upon his brow, and were authenti- 
cated by the signs and wonders wrought by 
the power of God under his ministry. Mass- 
ive, imperial in the strength and majesty of a 
great Christian manhood, and yet artless and 
confiding as a child, he presents one of those 
pictures of blended sweetness and power that 
attest the power of the gospel of Christ to lift 
human nature up to its own lofty ideal. 

He was born in Maryland in 1763. When 
yet a youth he came in contact with the Meth- 
odists in Baltimore at a time when they were 
at the high tide of spiritual power. His young 
heart was touched, melted, and remolded in 

(197) 



198 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the image of Christ. He was a most diligent 
student, .one of those self-taught men who, in 
the history of the Church, have astonished 
their contemporaries both by the extent of 
their acquisitions and their effective use of them 
in their holy calling. 

He was admitted on trial in the Baltimore 
Conference in 1785 — the year made memora- 
ble by the organization of Episcopal Method- 
ism in America. It is thus a pleasant coinci- 
dence that this Centenary year celebrates also 
the entrance upon the ministry of this father 
of Georgia Methodism. 

His success as a preacher was immediate 
and marked. On the Salisbury Circuit, in 
North Carolina, to which he was first sent, suc- 
ceeding Jesse Lee, therq was a large ingather- 
ing of souls, and those beautiful hills and val- 
leys on the sparkling Yadkin were vocal with 
the rejoicings of newborn souls. 

The next year he was sent to the Pedee Cir- 
cuit, in South Carolina, where his extraordi- 
nary eloquence drew vast crowds to hear him 
preach, while his flaming zeal made the people 
feel that of a truth a man of God had come 
among them. " Mr. Hull is young," said Dr. 
Coke, "but is indeed a flame of fire. He ap- 
pears always on the stretch for the salvation of 



HOPE HULL. 



199 



souls. Our only fear concerning him is that the 
sword is too keen for the scabbard — that he lays 
himself out in work far beyond his strength." 
During the year, by him and his helper Jere- 
miah Mastin eight hundred and twenty-three 
new members were brought into the Church, 
and twenty-two preaching-houses built. 

The next year he was sent to Amelia Circuit, 
in Virginia — a memorable year in that region ; 
for it was when John Easter was sweeping like 
an evangelical cyclone through Brunswick Cir- 
cuit, and all that country was shaken by the 
power of God. These two strong men joined 
their forces, and before their onset no opposi- 
tion could stand. Their faith was invincible, 
and their physical courage was equal to any 
emergency. 

He was sent next to Washington, Georgia. 
Such long moves were not infrequent in that 
day — the itinerancy was a reality. Thence- 
forward his name is indissolubly associated 
with Georgia Methodism. He was providen- 
tially fitted as well as called to the work to be 
done in that new country. He had the honor 
of being mobbed in Savannah, but seems to 
have been neither harmed nor frightened. 
Once while traveling in the country he was 
invited to spend the night at a house where a 



200 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ball was to be held. "He entered, and when, 
soon after, he was requested to dance, he 
took the floor and remarked aloud: 'I shall 
never engage in any Idnd of business without 
first asking the blessing of God upon it; so 
let us pray.' Quick as thought the preacher 
was on his knees praying in the most earnest 
manner for the souls of the people, that God 
would open their eyes to see their danger, and 
convert them from the error of their ways. 
All present were amazed and overwhelmed; 
many fled in terror from the house, while oth- 
ers, feeling the power of God in their midst, 
began to plead for mercy and forgiveness. Aft- 
er the prayer he said, 'On to-day four weeks 
I expect to preach at this house,' and quietly 
retired. On the appointed day the inhabitants 
for miles around were assembled, and heard 
one of the most powerful sermons that ever 
fell on human ears. From the work begun in 
a ball-room a most powerful revival of relig- 
ion extended in every direction, and many were 
added to the Church." 

He spent the year 1792 with Jesse Lee in 
New England. Never before had that people 
had such a waking-up as these two men gave 
them. Under their preaching the people won- 
dered, laughed, got mad, wept, repented, be- 



HOPE HULL. 201 



lieved, and were born of God in great numbers. 
They gave them new doctrine in a new style. 
New England might be said almost to have 
rocked under the tread of these men of might. 
That strange man Lorenzo Dow heard Hull 
preach, and from the sermon received the im- 
pulse that started him on his extraordinary 
career. By one of his startling appeals tho 
issue of life and death was made so plain to 
the half -decided young man that he dared not 
dally longer, lest he "should tumble into hell." 
How many more were savingly touched by 
Hull's preaching in New England will be 
known when the earth and the sea give up 
their dead. 

God sent him to Georgia when Georgia 
needed just such a man — a man not so " cult- 
ured" or pedantic as to be unable to reach the 
masses of the people, and yet so scholarly in 
his tastes, so studious, so alive to the impor- 
tance of Christian education, that he was pre- 
pared to lead successfully in the work. In 
1794 he traveled with Bishop Asbury, but he 
found that his health had too far failed for 
him to keep step with that ever-moving itiner- 
ant. So he opened an academy in AVilkes 
county, and thenceforth con^bined the func- 
tions of Christian teacher and preacher. Ho 



202 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



magnified both offices, teaching and preaching, 
and impressing his influence upon all classes 
of society. He took a prominent part in the 
work of general education, and was long a 
most active and influential member of the 
board of trustees of the University of Georgia. 
The most marked feature of his preach- 
ing was its searching quality. "Sinners often 
charged him," says Dr. Lovick Pierce, "with 
having learned their secrets, and using the pul- 
pit to gratify himself in their exposure — and 
Christians, entangled in the meshes of Satan's 
net, and ready to abandon their hope of divine 
mercy, have been cleared of these entangle- 
ments under his judicious tracings of the 
Holy Spirit in his manifold operations on the 
heart and conscience. Powerful emotion could 
be seen as it played in unmistakable outline 
upon the anxious believer's countenance, while 
undergoing one of these spiritual sif tings ; and 
when at last the verdict was written on his 
heart that he was a child of God according to 
the rules of evidence laid down, all the con- 
ventional rules about the propriety of praise 
were broken by one willing wave of joy, and he 
told aloud that the kingdom of God was not 
a kingdom of wprd only, but of power." He 
knew the human heart, and was a discerner of 



HOPE HULL. 



203 



spirits. Once while holding a class-meeting 
in the country, he approached an old man sit- 
ting far back and inquired concerning his spir- 
itual condition. The old man, after taking 
some time to think, said: "I am like old Paul— 
when I would do good, evil is present with 
me." "I am afraid you are like old Noah too 
— get drunk sometimes," was the quick reply. 
The shot hit — the old man was a drunkard. 

He stood like a solid granite pillar in Geor- 
gia Methodism during its formative period, 
embodying in his own character its best quali- 
ties, and wielding an influence that was far- 
reaching and abiding. 

He died October 4, 1818, his last words ex- 
pressing the faith and obedience that had 
marked his life: "God has laid me under 
marching orders, and I must obey." 

Broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a mass- 
ive head covered with iron- gray hair, slightly 
curling; small, keen, deep-blue eyes; an over- 
hanging brow, indicative of thinking - power 
well used; a voice of great power and flexibil- 
ity of tone; the whole countenance expressive 
of strength, and lit up from the reflection of 
the great, loving soul within — Hope Hull, 
grand and guileless, with glowing heart and 
eloquent lips, will be looked upon as a typical 



204 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Georgia Methodist and one of the chief archi- 
tects of the noble structure of Georgia Meth- 
odism as long as the Blue Ridge lifts its peaks 
to the skies, or the springs that gush cold and 
sparkling from their sides flow on to feed the 
rivers that flow among the old red hills. 







WILLIAM CAPERS. 



William GapeFg. 




E was the son of one of "Marion's 
men," a captain among the fleet- 
footed, sharp-sighted, stont-heart- 
ed troopers that followed the 
standard of that brilliant partisan 
hero when the red tide of battle rolled over 
South Carolina in the war for American inde- 
pendence. He (the father) was a bold rider, a 
true patriot, a real gentleman. His mother was 
a woman of the finest mold—gentle, refined, 
womanly, in the highest sense; her natural 
excellences exalted and polished by the grace 
of God. She died when her boy was but two 
years old, leaving him the inheritance of a 
memory of herself vague, yet tender and sa- 
cred, and of organic constitutional tendencies 
that, under the touch of gracious influences, 
blossomed into a life of extraordinary beauty 
and fruitfulness. 

He. was born in St. Thomas parish, in South 
Carolina, March 26, 1790. He had the ad- 
vantage of the best academic institutions ac- 
cessible to him until 1805, when he entered 

(205) 



206 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



South Carolina College, then under the presi- 
dency of Dr. Maxey. He was an apt and dili- 
gent student, and made rapid and solid acqui- 
sitions in learning. 

When about sixteen years of age he attended 
a camp-meeting in '''Bembert's Settlement." 
It was when the great religious awakening 
was sweeping the country. The scholarly and 
thoughtful youth was deeply and solemnly 
impressed by what he saw and heard. He 
was awe-struck by the conviction that there 
was "an actual, veritable power of God's 
grace" in the work, and a secret desire was 
awakened in his heart to become a partaker 
of the benefit. "Still I kept myself aloof," 
he says, " I know not why." But the impres- 
sion made upon his ingenuous and responsive 
soul was indelible. On going back to college 
he found its atmosphere of infidelity and vice 
so repellent that, with his father's consent, he 
left it and became a law-student. Not long 
after this his father, who had joined the Meth- 
odists in 1786, but whose lamp had nearly 
gone out, was graciously restored, and in the 
presence of his family made a renewed dedi- 
cation of himself to Christ. The scene was sol- 
emn and tender. The members of the house- 
hold mingled their tears, and the Holy Spirit 



WILLIAM CAPERS. 



207 



touched tlieir hearts with gracious power. In 
a little while the youth joined the Methodist 
Church, impelled by convictions he could no 
longer resist. This was in 1808. About six 
weeks afterward at a love-feast — the first he 
ever attended — he was born into the new life. 
The work was thorough, and his consciousness 
of it vivid and satisfying. "I could not but 
believe. I say/ it, as it were, and I felt it, and 
knew it, that Christ was mine, and that I had 
received of the Spirit through him, and had 
become a child of God." He saw, felt, knew 
— the gracious secret was certified fully to his 
trusting heart. This grateful, joyous certitude 
was an element of power in all his subsequent 
ministry. 

The conviction that he was called to preach 
took hold of his mind, and grew stronger and 
stronger. The distinction and emoluments to 
be won at the bar lost all their charms for him. 
Under the divine impulse he went with the 
circuit-preacher on his rounds, "exhorting" 
the people with thrilling power and with such 
visible efiect as attested to his own soul the 
verity of the supernatural call that had so 
strangely given a new direction to his life. 
There was a stir wherever he went, and it was 
felt by all that the hand of the Lord had been 



208 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



placed upon the ruddy-cheeked, smooth-faced 
youth, whose large, lustrous, dark eyes flashed 
with the fires of genius, and swam in tears of 
pity for dying sinners as he stood before them 
and besought them in Christ's stead to be rec- 
onciled to God. 

At the Annual Conference held at Liberty 
Chapel, in Greene county, Georgia, December, 
1808, he was admitted on trial as a traveling 
preacher, and appointed to the Wateree Cir- 
cuit, For forty-seven years he traveled and 
preached with unabating zeal and extraordi- 
nary success. Unsought honors crowded upon 
him. Intent only on saving souls, his fame as 
a pulpit orator spread until it filled all the 
land. In the chief cities of the United States 
and England crowded audiences listened with 
admiration to this Carolinian, whose bearing 
was princely in its dignity and grace, whose 
fervor was almost seraphic, and whose oratory 
in the pulpit exhibited a classic elegance and 
simplicity scarcely equaled in the history of 
the Church. He served the Church as Mis- 
sionary Secretary, editor, and bishop — to which 
last-mentioned ofiice he was elected in 1845. 

The most colossal pillar of his fame is the 
work done by him as a preacher. Whether 
preaching to the cultured and critical circles 



WILLIAM CAPERS. 209 



of the capital of his native State, to the mixed 
elements, half curious, half hostile, that first 
greeted him in Savannah, to the assembled 
wisdom and dignity of the British Conference, 
or to the half-savage Xegroes on the rice and 
cotton plantations, he was at home. He had 
a passion for soul-saving, and this gave him 
insight, directness, intensity, success with the 
highest and the lowest alike. The bejeweled 
belle of the city and the unlettered slave, at his 
call, came and bowed in penitence before God. 
His greatest pulpit efforts were indescribably 
grand and powerful. Single discourses of his 
are remembered unto this day — discourses 
that marked epochs in the spiritual lives of 
individuals and communities, producing effects 
to be rationally accounted for only by the rec- 
ognition of the accompanying presence and 
power of the Holy Spirit in the presentation 
of the crucified, risen, reigning Jesus as the 
present Saviour of sinners. No one who ever 
heard him preach when he was at his best 
could fail to recognize that back of all his nat- 
ural gifts of person, voice, and action was 
something higher, diviner — even that unction 
from the Holy One which is the final and in- 
dispensable equipment of a true minister of 
Jesus Christ. There is not a Methodist fam- 
14 



210 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 

ily in all Sonth Carolina that does not breathe 
a sweeter, holier atmosphere because this her 
saintly and gifted son lived, preached, and died 

among them. . -, . £ 

He died January 29, 1855, m the midst ot 
his family The final summons was sudden, 
but he was ready. "Now, my precious chil- 
dren, give me up to God," were among his last 

words. IT- 1 

Of medium height, well built; clad m cler- 
ical garb, .vitli snow-white i^eckcloth; com- 
plexion clear as that of a healthy child o the 
last; lips that expressed in a remarkable de- 
cree sweetness and firmness; a chm to match; 
a Grecian nose, whose dilated nostril hmted 
of heroic fires burning within; great, dark, 
magnificent eyes, that illuminated his face 
and all around him; a classic head, bald on 
■ top, but adorned with snow-white hair fine as 
floss-silk, falling down on either side ; the who e 
face and figure invested with an indescribable 
dignity and grace-this is William Capers, the 
pincely orator, the spotless bishop the founder 
of Negro missions in the South, the true type 
of a Christian gentleman, the friend of the 
lowly, and the servant of God. 




THOMAS WARE. 



3Fh©mag Wape. 



•o<C>o« 




E was of Scotch-English. blood, 
and inherited a happy physical 
and moral constitution. He had 
the sagacity to see where to take 
hold and the tenacity to hold on. 
He was shrewd and sturdy, saintly and thrifty 
— hamng his hope fixed on heaven, and yet 
taking earthly matters by the most conven- 
ient handle. In him spirituality and com- 
mon sense were not divorced, but blended fe- 
licitously and advantageously to the Church 
and the world. 

He was born at Greenwich, New Jersey, 
December 19, 1758. His mother, who was a 
Presbyterian, taught him to pray. She also 
instructed him in the larger and shorter cate- 
chisms; and thus the solid granite of funda- 
mental gospel truth was laid at the foundation 
of his beliefs and his life, though, as will be 
seen, he replaced some of the stones with oth- 
ers taken from the Arminian quarry. 

A double shadow rested on his early life — 
His father died, leaving him, with seven other 

(211) 



212 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



young children, to be provided for by his sad- 
hearted but loving and toilsome mother. To 
the sorrow for her dead that bowed her down 
was added the darkness of spiritual gloom. 
The wily adversary led her to fear that she 
was not one of the elect, hoping thus to drive 
a grief -stricken, struggling soul to despair. 
Thus the devil tries to make his own lie come 
true, knowing that when hope is lost all is 
lost; that when faith utterly loses its grasp 
the soul sinks down into inaction, and into the 
abyss of despair. She feared that "what she 
had taken for saving grace was nothing'more 
than common grace," a distinction then famil- 
iar to the ears of the people, but of which 
little is heard now. The suicide of a neigh- 
bor whose mind had been driven to despera- 
tion by similar doubts intensified the good 
lady's gloom, who was horror-stricken at the 
thought that she may have been "passed by" 
in God's election of such as were to be saved. 
Gloom is contagious; the mother's melancholy 
infected the son. The awful possibility — not 
to say certainty — of endless perdition made 
him shudder, and wish he had never been 
born. With such a conception of God, life 
was almost insupportable to the youth. To 
him there was no brightness in the sunshine 



THOMAS WARE. 213 



nor beauty in the Jersey hills, among which 
he wandered sad and solitary. When two o£ 
the youngest of the children died, the fear 
that they too might have been of the non- 
elect struck his sensitive heart with a new 
terror. Like mephitic vapor, the harsh dog- 
ma of an age that was passing away hid from 
his eyes the sun that was shining for all, and 
struck his young spirit with spiritual paraly- 
sis and despair. While in this state of mind 
he enlisted as a soldier of the Eevolutionary 
War on the patriot side. During his short 
period of military service his mental distress 
did not abate, and when he was discharged he 
was still groping in darkness. At this critical 
juncture in his life a Methodist preacher came 
along^Caleb B. Pedicord, a man of singular 
sweetness of spirit and winning address, whose 
singing charmed the ear and whose preaching 
melted the heart of even the hardest sinners — 
a man whose name marks a luminous spot 
wherever it appears on the historic page of 
early Methodism in America. The troubled 
young soldier went to hear Pedicord preach. 
The sermon was to him like sunrise after a 
long, dark, and stormy night. "Soon was I 
convinced," he says, "that all men were re- 
deemed and might be saved, and saved now, 



214 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



from the guilt, practice, and love of sin. With 
this I was greatly affected, and could hardly 
refrain from exclaiming aloud, 'This is the 
best intelligence I ever heard!'" The sun 
had indeed risen, and soon his soul was flood- 
ed with the effulgence of perfect day. On 
Pedicord's next round the zealous preacher 
greeted him warmly, and after a few words of 
inquiry knelt with him and prayed for him 
with strong cries and tears. The answer came 
quickly and with power. The soul of the 
young man was filled with unutterable peace. 
The mighty change was certified to his now 
grateful and loving heart by the witness of 
the Holy Spirit, and he rejoiced with joy un- 
speakable and full of glory. Old things had 
passed away, and all things had become new. 
He was a new creature in a new world of spir- 
itual blessedness; he knew it, and he told it to 
all around. Pedicord, who seems to have cher- 
ished a peculiar affection for the young man 
from the first, was scarcely less ecstatic than 
his convert. Together they made the Jersey 
hills echo with their rejoicings. He had 
thought of reentering the service of his coun- 
try as a soldier, but now his thoughts took 
another direction. Glowing with zeal and ex- 
ulting in the love of God, he could not refrain 



THOMAS WARE. 215 



from proclaiming the present, free, and full 
salvation lie had found. He was diffident of 
his ability, but a combination of- concurrent 
circumstances seemed to thrust him into the 
work of the ministry. Such was the effect- 
iveness of his powerful exhortations that the 
people who heard him felt that God had in- 
deed touched his lips with prophetic fire. 

When in 1783 Mr. Asbury visited the Mount 
Holly Circuit he sent for the young exhorter, and 
after giving him a characteristically searching 
examination, that keen-sighted captain of the 
Lord's host sent him to the Dover Circuit, 
where a preacher was needed. When he went 
to the Conference which was held in Balti- 
more the next year, the modest young preach- 
er was so impressed with the learning and 
greatness of that body that he was disposed 
to abandon the idea of becoming a preacher, 
at least until he had increased his acquisitions 
and grown in strength; but the need for more 
preachers was urgent, and his timidity was 
overruled. Giving himself prayerfully and 
wholly to the great work, he was freshly en- 
dued with power from on high for the dis- 
charge of its arduous and sacred functions. 
No truer heart ever followed the path of itin- 
erant toil and sacrifice; no steadier hand ever 



216 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



held aloft the banner of Methodism in Amer- 
ica. "He is a man of God," said a rude and 
wicked man at whose house he had staid 
one night. "How do you know that?" was 
asked. "Ah!" said the man, "when he re- 
proved me for my sins I felt the devil shake 
in me." His preaching was often attended 
with the power that made the devil shake. 

He was present at the Holston Conference 
in 1788, at which, while waiting for the coming 
of the bishop, a protracted meeting was held, 
in which a great number of souls were con- 
verted — among them General Russell and his 
wife, the latter a sister of Patrick Henry. He 
traveled and preached in the Holston country, 
on the Caswell Circuit in North Carolina, in 
the Mecklenburg country, and on the New 
River Circuit. Everywhere revivals of relig- 
ion attended his labors. At one of his quar- 
terly-meetings on the New River Circuit a 
revival broke out that swept all the adjacent 
country. Thirty persons, tw^elve of them w^hite, 
were converted on one plantation; the work 
spread in all directions, and for weeks together 
ordinary business was almost forgotten. The 
whole population was stirred with religious ex- 
citement. In Mecklenburg similar scenes took 
place — strong men falling prostrate, scoffers 



THOMAS W^ARE. 217 



trembling and bowing in penitence, and joy- 
ful converts shouting aloud tiie praises of 
God. All classes were equally affected, and 
all were made to feel that it was the work of 
the Lord. 

His fealty to his Master and his love for his 
work were put to a decisive test while he was 
in North Carolina. A wealthy couple, aged 
and childless, proposed to him to give him all 
their property on condition that he would stay 
with them and take care of them during the 
remainder of their short stay on earth. He 
declined the tempting offer. "I could not do 
it with a good conscience," he simply said; and 
that ended the matter. 

The honor of being the first man to propose 
a delegated General Conference is claimed for 
him, though the actual paternity of that meas- 
ure is ascribed to another man, whom this and 
future generations will delight to honor. At 
the General Conference of 1812 he was elected 
Book Agent, his probity, good sense, and me- 
thodical habits indicating to his brethren his 
adaptation to the office. At the end of four 
years he went back to the pastorate — whether 
from choice or because it was thought some- 
body else would make a better Book Agent, 
we do not know. It matters not; it is no dis- 



218 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



grace to any preacher that he does better work 
as a pastor than in any other place. Now and 
then a preacher seems to be called to makt 
books or edit a newspaper — every preacher i 
called to save souls, and that is his chief func- 
tion as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
That is the end for which publishing houses, 
religious newspapers, and all the machinery of 
the Church exists. 

He traveled and preached, his labors being 
everywhere blessed of the Lord. Unable long- 
er to endure the hardships of the active itin- 
erancy, he ceased to travel in 1825, but was 
zealous and fruitful to the last. The exposure 
to which he was subjected amid the rigors of 
a hard winter in the hills of East Tennessee 
increased the infirmities of age, but nothing 
abated the strength of his faith or the bright- 
ness of his hope. He died at Salem, New Jer- 
sey, March 11, 1842, his last moments cheered 
by the love of the blessed Christ whose voice 
had spoken peace to his soul among the same 
hills when he was a boy. 

A broad-shouldered, strong - framed man, 
with a slight tendency to corpulence; arrayed 
in plain but well-fitting garments of the old 
Methodist style; a face resolute but most ami- 
able in expression, the lips seeming to be ready 



THOMAS WARE. 219 



to pronounce the benediction that beams from 
the kindly, thoughtful eyes; the nose short 
and wide; the forehead high and well arched; 
the iron-gray hair parted to the right of the 
noble head, and slightly curling as it falls upon 
his temples — Thomas Ware, sturdy, pure, and 
true, stands in his place among the hero-saints 
that fought and won the battle for Methodism 
in America. 





EEAT, true heart! He was the 
apostle of Christian unity. He 
died without the sight for which 
he hoped and toiled and prayed; 
but in God's own good time it 
will come, and he will then know that no seed 
of truth and love sown by his hand hath been 
lost. The song he sung, though it may seem 
to have died with him, was the prelude to the 
grand symphony which will burst forth from 
the whole Church of Christ when its formula- 
ries shall be crystallized into essential oneness 
of expression, and there shall be one fold and 
one Shepherd. 

The pathos of a life of continuous struggle 
and suffering mingles with the admiration ex- 
cited by his genius, courage, and goodness. 
He was at once the embodiment of chivalrous 
courage and generous catholicity, living in the 
hope and dying with the prayer that the prom- 
ised unity of the people of God might hasten 
to a more speedy consummation. He inher- 
ited organic tendencies and ecclesiastical affil- 
f220) 




THOMAS 'H. STOCKTON. 



THOMAS H. STOCKTON. 221 



iations that shaped his life. He was a Meth- 
odist by all the tokens that indicate denomina- 
tional affinities; and yet he was too broad in 
his sympathies as he was too great in his gifts 
to be the property of any one section of the 
one Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The 
budding and blooming of his genius was rapid 
after he found his true Yocation. Other men 
have waxed to the full measure of their power 
and fame like the crescent moon that slowly 
fills its duplicate horn — ^he burst upon the 
gaze of his countrymen more like the sun that 
rises full-orbed above the eastern hill-tops in 
the morning. His light will shine on through 
lapsing decades — a light pure, steady, and 
strong because kindled from the Light of life. 
Living in a stormy period in the history of both 
Church and State, he was too earnest and cour- 
ageous to play the part of a neutral; but he 
never struck a foul blow nor spoke a word that 
left a sting in any human heart. Amid the 
din of ecclesiastical controversy and the storm 
of civil war he moved serene, unsoiled, un- 
harmed, clad in the armor of righteous pur- 
pose and filled with the spirit of Christ. He 
wrote prose and poetry of varied quality — some 
of it bearing the unmistakable stamp of gen- 
ius, with flashes that illuminated the scenes 



222 CENTENARY CAMEOS, 



he painted in words, and thrusts that went to 
the heart of the matter he had in hand. In 
early life he was in a printing-office, and was 
like many others who, after handling types, 
never get over their strange bewitchment. But 
the main pillar of his fame was his transcend- 
ent power as a preacher. The impressive pres- 
ence; the voice that, like a full-stringed organ, 
sounded every note that expresses passion or 
sentiment; the well-chosen words that fell into 
their places like the disciplined battalions of 
an army; the unearthly solemnity of manner; 
the air of the supcgpnatural that seemed to en- 
velop him; the sudden gales of inspiration 
that descended upon him at times, imparting 
a new and strange effect to his words — these 
were the elements of his power and popular- 
ity as a preacher, heightened by the fact that 
the mighty intellect and seraphic soul were in- 
cased in a physical organism so frail that it 
seemed that there was only the thinnest veil 
between the inspired orator and that world of 
spirits whose wonders and glories he portrayed 
with an eloquence so enchanting and overpow- 
ering. 

He was born in Mount Holly, New Jersey, 
June 4, 1808. From his father he inherited 
his intellectual endowments, literary tastes, and 



THOMAS H. STOCKTON. 223 



ecclesiastical relationships and predilections. 
As a child he exhibited strong religious ten- 
dencies and a highly poetic temperament. At 
the age of fifteen he had a long sickness that 
left his physical constitution prematurely im- 
paired — a great misfortune, we might at 
once conclude, but possibly a blessing in dis- 
guise. A thorn in the flesh is often the cor- 
relative of a larger measure of grace, and a 
frail physique sometimes admits its possessor 
to a nearer and clearer view of the things that 
are not temporal but eternal. "When I am 
weak, then am I strong," i^he gracious para- 
dox that incloses this truth. On the cross of 
bodily weakness or pain many elect souls have 
been lifted up to the heights of spiritual at- 
tainment and blessedness not otherwise to be 
reached. 

He was converted in 1826, his sensitive soul 
thrilling to the touch of the Holy Spirit, and 
responding to the gracious agencies of the 
gospel. Yery soon a conflict began within 
him that kept him agitated for many days. 
Worldly ambitions were in his heart, and 
worldly prospects opened before his imagina- 
tion. He was not unconscious of his powers 
—no man is ever wholly so — and there were 
not wanting well-meaning friends and advisers 



224 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



who pointed him to the paths he might follow 
to earthly fortune and fame. But all the time 
a voice was calling and a hand beckoning him 
in another direction. He felt that he was 
called of God to preach the gospel. He tried 
many pursuits, finding satisfaction in none, and 
turning from all with an aching void in his rest- 
less soul. At length he yielded to the solemn 
convictions he could not shake off. He preached 
his first sermon in Philadelphia in May, 1829; 
and from that day he lived in a new world, and 
his whole being blossomed into new life. At 
this critical juncture in his life he had the 
good fortune to find a friend and adviser in 
Dr. Thomas Dunn, who had been his pre- 
ceptor as a student in medicine — one of those 
wise, sympathetic, large-souled laymen who 
have been God's own guardian-angels to young 
preachers at their first beginnings in the work 
of the ministry. Blessings on them all ! 

That remarkable man, Nicholas Snethen^ 
called by Bishop Asbury his " silver trumpet " — 
met the pale and slender young licentiate soon 
afterward, and discerning in him the marks 
of unusual mental vigor and brilliancy, with- 
out delay put him in charge of a circuit. It 
was at once made clear to himself and all oth- 
ers concerned that he had found his true call- 



THOMAS H. STOCKTON. 225 



ing. If ever there was a born preacher, he was 
one. He had just married, and with his gen- 
tle young bride he went to his work on the 
eastern shore of Maryland. Great was the 
surprise and admiration of the good Method- 
ists of that hospitable region when they heard 
him preach. They recognized that one had 
come among them sent of God and endowed 
with an affluence of natural gifts and an unc- 
tion from above that marked him as indeed a 
chosen vessel. He swept over his large circuit 
on a wave of triumph, heard at every place by 
delighted multitudes. Though grieved, they 
were not disappointed when he was taken from 
them the next year and sent to Baltimore, 
where, young as he was, he took rank with 
the very foremost preachers in that city of 
churches and pulpit orators. The same year 
(1830) he sat with his father as a member of 
the convention which formed the Methodist 
Protestant Church — the youngest member of 
that body, and the one destined to fill the larg- 
est space in the eye of the world. The ardor 
of youth and the consciousness of high pur- 
pose made it a memorable occasion to him. 
The impression made by him upon that body 
is evinced by the fact that he was elected ed- 
itor of. the official Church newspaper. He 
15 



226 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



wisely declined. The next year he traveled 
as "missionary at large," thrilling the crowds 
that came out to hear him with his extraordi- 
nary eloquence, and rapidly extending his rep- 
utation as a preacher. The tide of his pop- 
ularity rolled so high that in 1833, two years 
afterward, when he was only twenty-five years 
old, he was elected Chaplain to the lower House 
of the Congress of the United States. He 
was reelected in 1835. Among the many dis- 
tinguished public men who came in contact 
with him there was not one who was not led 
thereby to entertain the sincerest respect for 
him and for his sacred calling. While they 
could not fail to enjoy his splendid oratory, 
their hearts were searched and their souls 
stirred by the faithful presentation of Christ 
crucified as the only way of salvation for sin- 
ners of all ranks and degrees. 

He wrote and published a volume of poems 
about this time. His verses are above the or- 
dinary level, but furnish another illustration of 
the fact that a man may be a strong thinker 
and a great orator and yet not be a poet. Many 
men who have the poetic temperament and 
lively imaginations find it hard to understand 
that the poetical gift is something more than 
these. By their attempts to put their thoughts 



THOMAS H. STOCKTON. 227 



into verse they only fetter tlieir genius. Ehyme 
and rhythm are wings for the thought, fancy, 
and imagination of the true poet — to all others 
they are dead -weights that drag expression 
down below its normal level. This master of 
noble prose was no exception to this rule; he 
was a prose-poet, but when he mounted the 
metrical Pegasus he dragged the earth. 

He went from Washington City to Philadel- 
phia, where he spent nine fruitful years — fruit- 
ful not so much in building up the Methodist 
Protestant Church as in impressing a power- 
ful and healthful religious influence upon all 
classes of the community and in the promo- 
tion of a sentiment of catholicity among Chris- 
tians of all the Churches. In 1847 he went to 
Cincinnati, where he remained three years. 
In 1850 he removed to Baltimore. In 1856 he 
returned to Philadelphia, where he remained 
until his death. 

In all these places and during all these years 
one great thought, one cherished desire, filled 
his brain and fired his heart — the unity of the 
Church of God. With impassioned eloquence 
he argued its necessity and portrayed its beau- 
ty and blessedness in colors so vivid that list- 
ening thousands were charmed and thrilled. 
Brotherly love and catholicity were incarnated 



228 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



in him; good men of all circles claimed fellow- 
ship with the man, though but few accepted 
his schemes of unification. He failed as oth- 
ers had failed before him, and perhaps died at 
last in the conviction that all that he could do 
would be to found another sect to be added to 
the many that now make up the visible body 
of Christ. But the deeper unity of the Spirit 
he helped many to attain unto; the fire that 
glowed in his own yearning heart, as he por- 
trayed the coming splendors of the Bride of 
Christ when she shall be arrayed to meet her 
Lord at his final appearing, kindled the hearts 
of responsive thousands whose sympathies took 
a wider range and whose hopes burned more 
brightly because of their contact with his lov- 
ing and lofty nature. On this theme there 
was an intensity of emotion, an exaltation of 
thought, and a sweep of imagination that 
brought to mind the days when Edward Irving 
seemed to be kindling in London the sacred 
fires of a new Pentecost. 

In 1859 and again in 1861 he was elected 
Chaplain to the House of Eepresentatives. 
New leaders were conducting the affairs of 
the nation. A great gulf separated the days 
of Andrew Jackson from those of Abraham 
Lincoln. But genius still asserted its power, 



THOMAS H. STOCKTON. 229 



and the gray - haired, tremulous, wasted old 
man was listened to with an admiration equal 
to that which had been accorded to the brill- 
iant young divine in the first flush of his 
youthful triumphs. 

Such was his bodily weakness toward the 
last that, being unable to stand, he preached 
like the aged St. John, in a sitting posture. 
The people listened and wondered and thrilled 
under the spell of an eloquence that was height- 
ened rather than hindered by the pathetic spec- 
tacle of imperial genius so slightly tabernacled. 
All the assumptions of materialistic philoso- 
phy found refutation in this exhibition of the 
dominance of mind over matter. 

He died October 9, 1868. His intellect was 
clear to the last, and a new inspiration came 
upon him as he neared the spirit- world. " How 
I desire," he exclaimed, "and how my desires 
increase, to know things as they are; to be at 
the center of all intelligence, and to understand 
all the truths in nature, providence, and grace ; 
to see the Saviour as he is in all his dignity 
and grandeur! I trust I am going to see the 
grandest thing in the universe — the light of 
the knowledge of the glory of God shining in 
the face of Jesus Christ. I cannot tell you 
how happy I am at the prospect of getting at 



230 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the center of universal intelligence through 
the mercy of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!" 
Thus his trusting, adoring spirit passed on to 
hehold the wonders and glories of immortality. 

Clad in loose-fitting, black garments ; slender, 
erect, with a pallid face that lighted up as by 
internal illumination when his soul was stirred; 
the orator's capacious, expressive mouth; chin 
firmly set; Eoman nose; high cheek-bones; 
eyes luminous and changeful; temples slight- 
ly depressed; forehead high and protruding 
where it met the long silvery hair that crowned 
the brainy, shapely head — Thomas H. Stock- 
ton, the apostle of Christian unity, the prose- 
poet, the brilliant orator richly endowed by 
nature and refined by grace, the Heaven-ap- 
pointed instrument for doing a work far tran- 
scending in importance its immediate and visi- 
ble results, holds a place peculiarly his own in 
the heart of Methodism, and he will continue 
to hold it until the dream of his grand and 
beautiful life — the essential unification of all of 
Christ's followers — shall be a consummated fact. 
Hasten, happy day! 

The musical lines of Amelia Welby, de- 
scriptive of Dr. Stockton as he appeared to 
the gentle Kentucky songstress, will fitly come 
in here: 



THOMAS H. STOCKTON. 231 



In stature majestic, apart from the throng 

He stood in his beauty, the theme of my song! 

His cheek pale with fervor — the blue orbs above 

Lit up with the splendors of youth and of love; 

Yet the heart-glowing raptures that beamed from those eyes 

Seemed saddened by sorrows and chastened by sighs, 

As if the young heart in its bloom had grown cold 

With its loves unrequited, its sorrows untold. 

Such language as his I may never recall; 

But his theme was salvation — salvation to all ; 

And the souls of a thousand in ecstasy hung 

On the manna-like sweetness that dropped from his tongue: 

Not alone on the ear his wild eloquence stole — 

Enforced by each gesture it sank to the soul, 

Till it seemed that an angel had brightened the sod 

And brought to each bosom a message from God. 

He spoke of the Saviour; what pictures he drew! 

The scene of his sufferings rose clear on my view — 

The cross, the rude cross where he suffered and died, 

The gush of bright crimson that flowed from his side, 

The cup of his sorrows, the wormwood and gall. 

The darkness that mantled the earth as a pall, 

The garland of thorns, and the demon-like crews 

Who knelt as they scoffed him — "Hail, King of the Jews! " 

He spoke, and it seemed that his statue-like form 
Expanded and glowed as his spirit grew warm — 
His tone so impassioned, so melting his air. 
As, touched with compassion, he ended in prayer; 
His hands clasped above him, his blue orbs upthrown, 
Still pleading for sins that were never his own, 
W^hile that mouth, where such sweetness ineffable clung, 
Still spoke, though expression had died on his tongue. 



232 CENTE^^RY CAMEOS. 



^ 



O God! what emotions the preacher awoke! 

A mortal he seemed — yet a deity spol^e; 

A man — ^yet so far from humanity riven ! 

On earth — yet so closely connected with heaven ! 

How oft in my fancy I've pictured him there, 

As he stood in that triumph of passion and prayer, 

With his eyes closed in rapture — their transient eclipse 

Made bright by the smiles that illumined his lips. 

There 's a charm in delivery, a magical art, 
That thrills, like a kiss, from the lip to the heart ; 
'T is the glance, the expression, the well-chosen word, 
By whose magic the depths of the spirit are stirred; 
The smile, the mute gesture, the soul-startling pause, 
The eye's sweet expression that melts while it awes; 
The lip's soft persuasion, its musical tone — 

such was the charm of that eloquent one ! 

The time is long past, yet how clearly defined 
That bay, church, and village float up on my mind ! 

1 see amid azure the moon in her pride, 

With the sweet little trembler that sat by her side ; 
I hear the blue waves, as she wanders along. 
Leap up in their gladness and sing her a song; 
And I tread in the pathway half-worn o'er the sod 
By the feet that went up to the Avorship of God. 

The time is long past, yet what visions I see! 

The past, the dim past, is the present to me; 

I am standing once more mid that heart-stricken throng: 

A vision floats up — 't is the theme of my song; 

All glorious and bright as a spirit of air. 

The light like a halo encircling his hair — 

As I catch the same accents of sweetness and love, 

He whisx^ers of Jesus, and points us above. 



THOMAS H. STOCKTON. 233 



How sweet to my heart is the picture I 've traced ! 
Its chain of bright fancies seemed almost effaced, 
Till memory, the fond one, that sits in the soul. 
Took up the frail links, and connected the whole; 
As the dew to the blossom, the bud to the bee. 
As the scent to the rose, are those memories to me; 
Eound the chords of my heart they have tremblingly clung, 
And the echo it gives is the song I have sung. 







James fl. Bunciein. 

••o^o«» 

TEONG, gentle, cultured, round- 
ed, grand, he was the consum- 
mate flower of Virginia Method- 
ism. 

Of Scottish ancestry, with a 
scholarly bias in his blood, polished by cult- 
ure and glowing with the fervor of true god- 
liness, he was a happy illustration of hopeful 
heredity developed under the best conditions, 
both natural and gracious. In him were blend- 
ed a saintliness and knightliness that brought 
back the days when chivalry was the ally of 
religion, and when its banners were borne by 
men who never told a lie nor turned their 
backs to a foe. Twice he came near being elect- 
ed a bishop, once missing it by a single vote ; 
but though he died unmitered, the wreath of 
contemporaneous love and honor was placed 
upon his brow by universal acclaim, and his 
picture will always have a prominent place in 
the portrait-gallery of American Methodism. 
His work was done in the pulpit and school- 
room — its record is in the characters molded 
(28 i) 




JAMES_A. DUNCAN. 



JAMES A. DUNCAN. 235 



by him for eternity rather than in the pages 
that link a name to earthly glory. The son of 
a scholar, and reared in the midst of scholastic 
associations, he bore the marks of the attri- 
tion that polishes the intellect, but he pos- 
sessed a soul so manly, an individuality so 
marked, and a genius so brilliant that it was 
evident that nature had done for him what no 
schooling can do for any man — endowed him 
for leadership among men. In any secular 
calling he could not have failed to take high 
rank, for he had along with all his wealth of 
natural advantages that "gift of popularity" 
which is often indefinable, but which makes 
mankind eager to bestow unasked their rich- 
est gifts upon its fortunate possessor. The 
high and the low alike gave him their hearts. 
Like other truly great men, his greatest achieve- 
ments did not seem to exhaust the full measure 
of his power. When he soared highest his 
wing was steady. There were times when in 
the pulpit mighty waves of spiritual power 
caught him in their sweep, and then his face 
shone with almost seraphic brightness, his 
voice was tuned to a loftier key, his thoughts 
took a higher and wider range, his words fell 
into rhythmic order, and the rapt multitudes 
felt that there was in his preaching some- 



236 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



thing beyond what was the product of genius, 
learning, art, or any thing merely human. 
The sparklfe of his brilliant rhetoric was then 
lost in the overpowering blaze of the bap- 
tism of fire. He was a marvel of versatil- 
ity. When, during the civil war, he was sta- 
tioned in Richmond, after* spending the days 
and nights of the week in camp with the army, 
on Sunday he would go back to the capital 
and preach sermons that excited the admira- 
tion of the ablest men who were there gath- 
ered as the master-spirits of that mighty strug- 
gle. Among his regular hearers was Jefferson 
Davis, no mean orator himself, and a man not 
given to indiscriminate or excessive eulogies 
of men. He was at the same time the idol of 
"the boys" in camp and the favorite preacher 
of the city. He had the genuine touch of nat- 
ure that made him akin to all sorts of men, 
and he possessed those higher credentials that 
authenticated his claim to be t£ie messenger of 
God. He did not make popularity by lowering 
himself to those beneath his own moral level; 
he drew them upward toward the plane of his 
own high Christian manhood. The truest man- 
hood and the truest godliness were found in 
happy union in him because he patterned his 
life after that of the man Christ Jesus. This 



JAMES A. DUNCAN. 237 



manly element in liis character, with its gra- 
cious accompaniment, exhibited itself when, 
after he had barely missed the highest honors 
of the Church, and his friends were disap- 
pointed and regretful, it was evident to all 
that his noble spirit was not clouded by the 
least shadow of dissatisfaction. To intrigue 
or scramble for ecclesiastical promotion was 
impossible to him. He would have shrunk 
from it as not only dishonorable but sacrile- 
gious. This perfect Christian manliness shone 
conspicuously when in 1876 he stood before 
the General Conference of the Methodists of 
the North as a fraternal delegate from the 
Methodists of the South. He then and there 
defined fraternity in such a way that from that 
hour there was a clearer conception and a truer 
appreciation of its meaning and value. His 
address on that occasion laid deep and broad 
the basis of a fraternity that men will respect 
and God will bless. His salutation was in 
these words: "As I stand in your presence to- 
day, a solemn joy in my heart takes prece- 
dence of all other emotions. The responsibil- 
ity of my mission and this hour is solemn, but 
its hope is an inspiration of joy. Around me 
I behold the venerable and distinguished rep- 
resentatives of a great Church; beyond them 



238 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



are millions of Methodists in America and 
Europe who feel deeply concerned in the is- 
sues of this hour; beyond them, in still more 
distant circles, stand a great cloud of wit- 
nesses, composed of all who care for the peace, 
the unity, and the prosperity of the kingdom 
of owr Lord Jesus Christ; and, sir, above us is 
the general assembly and church of the first- 
born who are written in heaven, and among 
them, high-seated in their radiant places, are 
our sainted fathers; and over all, upon that 
eternal throne before which we all reverently 
worship, reigns the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole fam- 
ily in heaven and earth is named. In such 
solemn presence, where all dissensions seem 
profanities, where all temporal and sectional 
distinctions disappear, and where 'there is 
neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, 
neither male nor female, but all are one in 
Christ Jesus, through whom all have access 
by one Spirit unto the Father, are no more 
strangers and foreigners but fellow-citizens 
with the saints and of the household of God,' 
as a humble citizen of that kingdom and mem- 
ber of that household, in the name of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and by 
her authority as a fraternal messenger, with 



JAMES A. DUNCAN. 239 



brotherly kindness in my heart and words of 
peace upon my lips, I salute you this day as 
brethren in Christ Jesus our Lord." And this 
was his peroration: "Brethren, what an oppor- 
tunity is ours! Well for us if we can discern 
the signs of the times to know the things 
which make for our peace ! Our glorious land, 
that blooms between the seas, is a magnificent 
field for Methodist work. I pray God we may 
have wisdom to cultivate it in the spirit of 
peace and Christian fellowship. Shall we 
show ourselves worthy of such an inherit- 
ance? From its extreme northern border, 
where God's perpetual bow of peace glorifies 
Niagara's cliffs, to the sea-girt southern line, 
where God's bounteous gifts make earth al- 
most an Eden of fragrance and beauty; and 
from the rock-bound Atlantic, where the east- 
ern song of the sea begins its morning music, 
away to the far-off Pacific, where the western 
waters murmur their evening benediction to 
our blessed land as the tide goes out beneath 
the setting sun — everywhere we feel the inspi- 
ration of our country, and devoutly pray, God 
bless our native land! God give it, I pray, the 
glory of Lebanon and the excellency of Car- 
mel and Sharon; and may all the inhabitants 
thereof see the glory of the Lord and the ex- 



240 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



cellency of our God!" The effect was thrill- 
ing. " There was not a soul in the vast build- 
ing that was not visibly affected, and for sev- 
eral minutes the sensation it produced was 
plainly manifest." The members of the au- 
gust body before which he spoke were taken 
captive. They felt that the Church which had 
produced and which honored such a man must 
be rooted in a glorious past and have the prom- 
ise of a hopeful future. That speech is bear- 
ing fruit at this hour. It swept away the 
mists that had enveloped a great question that 
vitally affected the interests of Christianity in 
this nation, and planted the white banner of 
peace on the walls of truth. There may it 
float forever! 

He was born in Norfolk, Virginia, April 14, 
1830. From his father, a solid scholar and a 
clear, keen thinker, he inherited the mental 
and bodily vigor, and from his gentle, saintly 
mother the milder traits that distinguished 
him. When he was but a child his father was 
called to the chair of ancient languages in Kan- 
dolph-Macon College, then located at Boydton, 
Mecklenburg county, Virginia. The boy grew 
up in the midst of the healthful influences of 
a Christian school located among a people pos- 
sessing the best characteristics of the Virgin- 



LTr 



JAMES A. DUNCAN. 241 



ians of the old regime. His spriglitliness, liis 
modesty, his irrepressible flow of animal spir- 
its, his keen ^vit, his graceful bearing, and his 
kind and generous nature made him a univer- 
sal favorite. He possessed also another dan- 
gerous gift — -that of mimicry — and it gave a 
peculiar zest to his society to the end of his 
life; but he never used it spitefully. The 
laughter that could not be restrained by those 
who witnessed his mirth-provoking imperson- 
ations was unmixed with any sting of pain to 
any human being. 

The great crisis of his life came in 1847. 
During a revival in the college his heart was 
touched by the Holy Spirit, not for the first 
time, but with a power never felt before. He 
felt that his decision must now be final. Doubt- 
less visions of earthly pleasure and glory pre- 
sented themselves to the imagination of the 
brilliant young student, but he was not diso- 
bedient to the heavenly calling. When he 
heard the Master's call, "Come, follow me!" 
he left all and followed him. God only knows 
how hard was the struggle. His surrender was 
absolute and his peace was full. Translated 
from darkness to light, there was to him a new 
meaning in the old truths of Christianity, vdth 
which he had all his life been familiar —a new 
16 



242 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



beauty in forest and field, and a new glory in 
the overarching heavens. He gave up all for 
Christ, and received all of blessedness that 
Christ can give to the willing soul. A con- 
clusive test of the completeness of his conse- 
cration soon came to him in a call to preach 
the gospel. The next year the smooth-faced 
youth was duly licensed to preach, and sent 
forth. He struck a high note as a preacher at 
the start, though it is said that his first ser- 
mon was a frightened and futile effort. The 
force, the fluency, and the fervor with which 
he spoke soon revealed to the good Methodists 
of Mecklenburg county the fact that a new 
pulpit star was rising in Virginia. His rise 
was rapid. Graduating in 1849, almost im- 
mediately he was placed in charge of the 
church in Alexandria. Very soon there was 
a stir in that quiet old city on the Potomac. 
The extraordinary eloquence of the young 
preacher became the theme of popular con- 
versation, and admiring crowds flocked to hear 
him; but the eloquence that drew them had a 
quality that excited other sentiments than that 
of admiration. There was in it a pungency 
that penetrated their consciences, a tenderness 
that melted their hearts, and a power that con- 
quered their wills. A great revival broke out, 



JAMES A. DUNCAN. 243 



and preaclier and people were borne onward 
together on a mighty tide of salvation. There 
was great joy in that city. In an ecstasy of 
grateful joy the young preacher sunk down at 
the feet of his Lord, and renewed his act of 
entire consecration. This first success typed 
his whole ministry. In Fairfax, Leesburg, 
Alexandria (for the second time), and Wash- 
ington, he won the hearts of the people, and 
brought many to Christ. When he was sent 
to Kichmond in 1847 he entered upon a field 
of wider influence, and rapidly won a wider 
fame. The people of that historic city quickly 
took him to their hearts, and held him to the 
last. The old Methodists recognized in him 
the fervor and the spontaneity, the spirituality 
and the power that warmed and strengthened 
their souls. Men of the world and women of 
fashion were attracted by his brilliant oratory, 
and the young people were kindled by the glow 
of his great heart and charmed by the grace 
of his manner. Among such masters of sa- 
cred eloquence as Hoge and Jeter and Read 
and Edwards, he took at once a front rank. 
After Eichmond became the capital of the 
Southern Confederacy his influence still far- 
ther widened. There was scarcely a civilian 
about the capital or a tattered soldier in the 



244 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ranks of the armies around the city whose 
eyes did not light up with pleasure and pride 
when his name was mentioned. His ministry 
was fruitful as well as popular. The Church 
was edified and thousands were touched by his 
sanctified genius with gracious impressions. 
A durable monument of his zeal and success 
is the noble Methodist church on Broad street 
— built by him during the throes of the great 
conflict, when Richmond was a beleaguered 
camp, with the roar of the battle almost in- 
cessantly in her ears and the tramp of march- 
ing armies in her streets. He somehow found 
time, amid all his other labors, to edit the Bich- 
mond Christian Advocate, which happily reflect- 
ed his devout spirit, scholarly taste, and sturdy 
good sense. In many other ways he was a bul- 
wark to the cause of religion during that dark 
and stormy time. He possessed the sympa- 
thetic heart of the true pastor. The glazing 
eye of the dying soldier brightened as he bent 
above him and pointed him to the Friend 
of sinners, or knelt at his side and prayed. 
When the war closed the name of "Jimmy 
Duncan," as the soldiers fondly called him, 
was a household word from the Potomac to the 
Sabine. His two years' pastorate in Peters- 
burg was characterized by the same zeal and 



JAMES A. DUNCAN. 245 



success. His foot-prints there are deep and 
indelible. 

In 1868 he was elected to the presidency of 
Eandolph-Macon College. Following many 
illustrious examples he accepted the position, 
constrained by a sense of duty. The nine years 
he gave to this service were laborious and abun- 
dantly fruitful. A large body of young preach- 
ers came directly under his influence ; and be- 
sides a great number of young men looking to 
secular pursuits, whose admiration for his gen- 
ius made them receptive of his moral influ- 
ence and responsive to his efforts to lead them 
to Christ. This college, always remarkable 
for its evangelical spirit, and often blessed 
with extraordinary revivals of religion among 
its students, was a center of spiritual light and 
power under his administration. Like Fisk 
and Olin and Pierce and Paine and Wight- 
man, he demonstrated that a preacher of the 
gospel may be a successful Christian educator. 
He had no vacations. In the intervals between 
the college sessions he traveled, preached, lect- 
ured, and labored in special services with a 
zeal that was consuming. The listening mul- 
titudes brightened at his coming, and were 
richer in spiritual treasures when he went 
away. Young manhood caught fire at his 



246 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



toncli and entire communities were inspired 
with nobler purposes and stimulated to more 
generous deeds. Strong and elastic as he was, 
these labors were too heavy. The too willing 
worker was overtasked, a severe illness fol- 
lowed, by which his superb constitution was 
permanently impaired; but he worked on with 
unabated activity, and with constantly enlarg- 
ing influence and reputation. 

He died September 24, 1877, at Ashland, tho 
seat of the college. A shock of surprise and 
grief thrilled the heart of the Church, and a 
profound sorrow pervaded all classes of the 
people when the news reached them that he was 
dead. Noble, kindly, princely heart! in his 
life never by word or deed did he inflict a pang 
on a sensitive human soul, but he had been a 
helper, a comforter, an inspiration to thou- 
sands. He was buried from the Broad Street 
Church, Richmond, a great concourse of sor- 
rowing people following him to the grave. 
Bishop Doggett pronounced a noble eulogy. 

Of medium height, strongly built; clad in 
well-fitting, clerical black garments; with fresh, 
ruddy complexion, large and bright blue eyes, 
abundant brown hair; classic features, which 
in their play gave instant and full expression 
to every shade of thought and feeling; a kingly 



JAMES A. DUNCAN 247 



head; ease, dignity, and grace in every move- 
ment; the whole man enveloped in an atmos- 
phere deeply religious and yet so truly human 
as to give a feeling of kinship to all sorts of 
people ; and withal an elevation of thought and 
a weight of moral presence that gave him a 
supremacy among his fellows freely accorded 
by all — James A. Duncan, apostle, orator, 
evangelist, educator, marked by princely man- 
hood and shining graces, dying in the prime 
of his life, takes a place that he will hold 
among our noble and holy dead, and his mem- 
ory will be fragrant as long as the beams of 
the rising and setting sun shall gild the Peaks 
of Otter, or the swift-flowing James roll its 
silver wave to the sea. 







Samuel ^nM&nY. 

EON- WILLED, unbending, un- 
compromising, yet gracious and 
tender, fatlierly and loving — 
he was a psychological paradox. 
Stern, when occasion demanded, 
as one of the old Hebrew prophets, in his in- 
ner heart there was a fountain of feeling deep 
as an ocean. He could paint the terrors of 
perdition until the very sky seemed to be dark- 
ling above the guilty sinner and he was made 
to hear the growl of swift-approaching judg- 
ment-thunders and to quail in dread of light- 
nings ready to be flung from the hand of mer- 
cy turned into righteous wrath. And he could 
weep over impenitent souls until his strong 
frame would be shaken and his great heart 
seem to be breaking. 

He was the product of Georgia Methodism. 
What he would have been without it, we do 
not know. Had he gone wrong, he would not 
have gone only half-way. He was wholly on 
one side or the other in all things. Had he 
been a Calvinist, he would have out-Calvined 
(248) 





SAMUEL ANTHONY. 



SAMUEL ANTHONY. 249 



Calvin himself. Had he not been the Lord's 
servant, he would have been the devil's own. 
Methodism reached him at a time when all 
Georgia was ablaze with revival flame. The 
steel-like elements of his nature were fused 
and molded into the image of Christ, and his 
fundamental religious beliefs took a Wesleyan 
cast which they never lost. The theology of 
Methodism satisfied his judgment; his expe- 
rience of divine grace brought peace to his 
conscience, kindled within him a hope that 
never grew dim, and was the inspiration of a 
life of unreserved devotion to Christ and of 
unceasing activity in his service. 

He was born in South Carolina in 1808, but 
came to Georgia at so early an age that he 
claimed to be nothing but a Georgian. But 
there was in his composition some of the pe- 
culiar metal that was in Calhoun, McDuffie, 
and other great Carolinians who were ready to 
stake all and lose all for an idea. Men of this 
type are invincible when they are right, and 
infinitely troublesome when they are wrong. 

Among the breezy hills of Middle Georgia, 
in sight of the Blue Bidge, whose hazy out- 
line met and mingled with the northern sky, 
the raw-boned, sinewy, hard - muscled, hard- 
handed boy grew in stature and picked up 



250 CENTENARY CAMEOS 



such book - learning as the teacher of the 
" old-field school " could impart. He was not 
specially quick in learning, but what he got he 
held. He was high-spirited and a hard hitter; 
he did not know how to yield when he had 
once begun to fight. The boy of his own age 
and size who engaged him in single combat 
seldom felt like doing so again. 

When he was about seventeen years old the 
Methodist preachers came into the neighbor- 
hood in which he lived. He attended their 
meetings with feelings of mingled curiosity 
and antagonism — for he had been taught in a 
different theological school. It was an auspi- 
cious season for the tall, thoughtful, earnest 
youth. He had reached that critical period in 
life when the soul, glowing with the fires of 
youthful passion, and reaching out in vague 
but irrepressible yearnings, is responsive to 
voices from hell or from heaven. It may not 
be a wholly irreparable disaster to let this 
season pass without decisive right action, but 
somewhat is lost that cannot be regained — the 
tide of advantageous opportunity, after ebb- 
ing, may return, but it will never rise so high 
again. O reader under the twenties, take 
heed! The preaching of those flaming Meth- 
odists brought the ingenuous youth to a crisis. 



SAMUEL ANTHONY. 251 



It was repentance or resistance, life or death, 
heaven or hell — now or never. That was the 
day of overwhelming convictions and conver- 
sions that were demonstrably supernatural. 
The Holy Ghost authenticated his own mes- 
sage as it came from the burning lips of men 
of God, who, under its afflatus, with startling 
energy pressed home upon the consciences 
and hearts of sinners a broken law and a par- 
doning Christ. It is said that when the great 
change took place he electrified all within the 
crowded country meeting-house by such an 
outburst of hortatory power as they had never 
heard before. His call from God to preach 
quickly followed his conversion. The popu- 
lar expectation took the same direction. Im- 
pelled by forces within him that he could not 
restrain, he began to call sinners to repent- 
ance. At nineteen he was regularly licensed 
to preach. In 1832 he applied for admission 
on trial into the Georgia Conference. The 
godly, plain-dealing presiding elder, Andrew 
Hammill, shook his head doubtfully, fearing 
the bashful, awkward-looking youngster would 
never make a preacher. But he was admit- 
ted, and for forty-eight years he traveled and 
preached in Georgia with a fidelity that stood 
all tests, a zeal that never cooled, a courage 



252 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



that nothing daunted, and an eloquence that 
was as unmistakably divine in its inspiration 
as it was marvelous in its effects. His power 
in the pulpit was the power of God. He went 
from his knees to the sacred desk with the 
burden of souls on his heart, and the touch of 
the live coal on his lips. The word, as spoken 
by him, was a discerner of the thoughts and 
intents of the hearts of his hearers ; they were 
driven from every false hope and refuge of 
lies, and made to feel that they mast then and 
there decide for hell or heaven. Fifteen hun- 
dred souls were converted and brought into 
the Church during the two years he was on the 
Ocmulgee Circuit — converted according to the 
Bible standard — brought in by the strait gate 
of repentance and faith, and with the assump- 
tion of the vow to lead a new life and go on 
unto perfection. He never cheapened the 
terms of salvation to gain a proselyte. The 
work done by him was genuine- — the fruit 
abides. Heaven has garnered a goodly com- 
pany of his spiritual children, and his influ- 
ence will remain to bless the Church until the 
resurrection trumpet shall wake from their 
slumbers the holy dead that sleep in Jesus 
among the hills where he preached in his 
prime, and where his dust rests waiting the 



SAMUEL ANTHONY. 253 



great rising day. The one word that imparts 
the secret of his power as a preacher is spirit- 
uality — a word that has a meaning that will be 
understood by many for whom this is written. 
It was felt before he opened his mouth, it 
spoke in the tones of his voice, it breathed in 
his words. In prayer he pleaded with God 
with awful earnestness until the heavens seemed 
to open above him and the divine glory de- 
scend upon him. Eising from his knees with 
rapt and illuminated face, and a soul sur- 
charged with divine power, he preached ser- 
mons that in thought, expression, and manner 
were so manifestly above the natural plane 
that the preacher himself was a demonstration 
of the divinity of his message. If a preacher 
was wanted to let off rhetorical fire-works or 
tickle the fancy at a literary festival, he was 
not sent for; but if one was wanted to lead 
a desperate onset against the allied and in- 
trenched forces of evil in any community, all 
felt that he was the instrument suited to the 
work. 

Who that heard it can ever forget the ser- 
mon he preached in Macon, in 1851, on the 
text, "Let me die the death of the righteous, 
and let my last end be like his?" It was a 
matchless piece of pulpit irony. It burned like 



254 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



caustic, and more than one convicted hearer 
visibly winced under the terrible indictment. 
The baseness, the folly of trying to live a sin- 
ner and yet die a saint were pictured in such 
colors that delinquents blushed with shame or 
paled with alarm. The sin and the doom of 
Balaam, the son of Beor, were portrayed with 
awful vividness. "And yet," said the preach- 
er, "with your Bible open before you, and with 
its warning ringing in your ears, you are enact- 
ing the same folly — -cheating, overreaching, 
robbing your neighbor, living in flagrant vio- 
lation of God's law, and all the time saying in 
your heart, ' Let me die the death of the right- 
eous! ' You are going to hell with the words 
of the apostate and doomed prophet upon your 
lips! You would clutch the wages of sin in 
this world and reap the rewards of righteous- 
ness in the world to come ! The hell that you 
feel in your guilty soul this day forebodes the 
eternal perdition that will be your doom un- 
less you repent, for God hath said the hope 
of the hypocrite shall perish!" And then he 
made an appeal so solemn, so melting, so full 
of the might of impassioned love, that tears 
flowed like rain, and many heads bowed in 
penitence before God. That sermon, it was 
said, produced at least a temporary reform in 



SAMUEL ANTHONY. 255 



the practice of the Cotton Exchange of Macon. 
During that same pastorate he had a collision 
with the choir. His notions did not conform 
to some of the arrangements made with regard 
to the singing, and he took his stand against 
them — and held it. " I will not yield," he said; 
"I am only exercising my rights as a pastor, 
and the law of the Church and the Word of 
God sustain me. I will not yield! " The next 
Sunday he preached a sermon suited to the 
situation— a sermon so ably reasoned, so fear- 
less and yet so full of tenderness, that all were 
either convinced or melted down. " It is a com- 
mon remark," he said toward the close, with a 
choking voice, " that only a mother knows a 
mother's heart; and it is just as true that only 
a pastor knows a pastor's heart!" The words 
came forth broken by deep emotion, his chest 
heaving and the tears running down his cheeks. 
There was no more trouble about that choir. 
Every tuneful recusant was conquered. When 
he stood before a vast crowd in the country on 
a popular occasion and delivered the message 
of God, there was often an evangelical unction 
and cumulative power that broke through all 
the incrustations of worldliness and indiffer- 
ence, and in the final appeal carried the hearts 
of the weeping multitude by storm. When, 



256 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



as presiding elder, he made his rounds on a 
district, there was a stir in his wake — backslid- 
ers reclaimed, loose-living Church-members 
keyed up to a higher tone, sinners awakened, 
and new converts starting in the Christian life 
with the momentum of genuine spiritual life. 
He subsoiled Immanuel's lands, sowed in tears 
and reaped in joy. To call him a revivalist 
might convey a wrong idea of him to such as 
associate the term with mere excitement and 
emotionality. He was a revivalist in the truer 
and larger sense of the word. The Church 
grew holier and stronger under his ministry, 
and much people were added to the Lord. 
The number will be fully known only when 
the ransomed hosts shall meet on Mount Zion. 
He had but one way of doing every thing. 
He did not know what expediency meant. To 
him that which was not wholly right was wrong 
—and that settled the matter; he was against 
it. More compliant persons thought him ob- 
stinate—perhaps he was — but it was the obsti- 
nacy of a man who loved truth and right more 
than he loved popularity or life. He was of 
the stuff of which martyrs are made. To him, 
and to others like-minded — ^Parks, Glenn, Ar- 
nold, Turner — Georgia Methodism owes much 
of the deep-rooted faith, uncompromising spir- 



SAMUEL ANTHONY. 257 



it, and flaming zeal wliicli liave given it a place 
in the forefront of the Methodist hosts as they 
march onward to the conquest of the world for 
our Lord Christ. 

About six feet two inches high, straight as a 
grenadier, long-limbed and large-boned; clad 
in canonical Methodist garb, for which he 
seemed to have been made, with a white cra- 
vat without collar; complexion ruddy and clear; 
cheek-bones unusually high, lips vice-like when 
closed, forehead square; head with bumps 
enough to bewilder all the phrenologists — 
made after its own pattern; under heavy, pro- 
jecting eyebrows, eyes that were blue when he 
was in repose, but which seemed almost liter- 
ally to flash fire and change colors when his 
brain and heart were stirred; a nose slightly 
Roman — Samuel Anthony, grand in his severe 
simplicity, attractive in the symmetrical beau- 
ty of his strong Christian character, the war- 
rior fires that naturally burned within him tem- 
pered to a saintly glow, stands among his con- 
temporaries like the v/onderful Stone Mount- 
ain that rises among the lesser Georgia hills, 
its sides seamed and rugged, its summit storm- 
beaten and bare, its base fringed with ever- 
green cedars, and studded with the wild flow- 
ers that bloom in the clefts of the rocks. 
17 



R. Ii. f. B peen 




RAND and good Dr. Green ! Am- 
ple, lofty, self-poised, cool-head- 
ed, warm - hearted, far - sighted, 
and steady - handed, a sage in 
counsel and a hero in the field, 
he stands in the midst of his fellows like 
Mount Shasta that lifts its head to the clouds, 
white with eternal snow, while the grass grows 
green and in Californian luxuriance and splen- 
dor the wild flowers bloom in the sunny vales 
below. Never hurrying, yet sure to be in time; 
seldom visibly excited, yet able to stir multi- 
tudes; conciliatory and yielding, yet apt to 
achieve what he undertook; the companion 
and counselor of the highest and the wisest, 
yet loved by little children; blessed with world- 
ly prosperity, yet giving unstinted devotion to 
the Church of Christ; a prince among pul- 
pit orators and the life of a fishing party; a 
wise law-maker and a sparkling wit; strong 
yet tender; affable without loss of dignity — 
his name is enrolled high among the great 
men that Tennessee has given to Church and 
(258) 




GREEN. 



A. L. P. GREEN. .259 



State; and his fame will outlast the massive 
marble that marks his grave on the beautiful 
hill near Nashville, where the last rays of the 
setting sun gild the sacred spot where the holy 
dead are sleeping until Jesus comes. 

Precocity was in his blood. His mother 
married when she was fifteen years old, and 
she was converted and joined the Method- 
ists the same memorable year — in 1776 — 
when the flag of freedom was flung to the 
breeze by the American Colonies amid the 
first throes of the conflict out of which the 
great American Eepublic was born. The gen- 
tle yet energetic Judith Spillmon at that early 
age was not afraid to intrust herself to the 
grave, uncompromising George Green, who in 
his sober way had wooed and won her where 
she lived among the hills of Albemarle, in Old 
Virginia. The youthful couple lived long to- 
gether, and throve in the sort of riches empha- 
sized in the Bible, being blessed with sixteen 
children, seven of whom were boys, of whom 
the youngest is the subject of this sketch. 
The prolific pair emigrated first to East Ten- 
nessee and then to North Alabama, carrying 
their Methodism and little else with them in 
their westward journeyings. But in their re- 
ligion they had a treasure beyond all price, and 



260 



CENTENARY CAMEOS, 



it was a sacred joy to tlie mother in her old 
age that she was honored of God in being the 
mother of a minister of the gospel. It is a 
notable fact that at his birth the child that was 
destined to attain such massive proportions, 
physically and mentally, was so small that 
Little was given to him as part of his patro- 
nymic. The future career in his case was the 
antithesis to its beginning. The boy grew rap- 
idly, but did not soon stop growing. He was 
a man in physical stature while in his early 
teens, and by the time he had reached the twen- 
ties he was almost a giant. He was converted 
when he was nine years old. At a cam p-meeting 
held near his father's house, and at which he 
was a "camper," his young heart was touched. 
One night after the public exercises were over 
a supplemental service was extemporized; the 
boy and an old Negro woman were the only 
penitents, he crawling under the seats to "the 
mourners'-bench." The Lord met him there 
and spoke to his inner soul as audibly as he 
did to the boy Samuel as he lay in the dark 
with ear attent to hear. The next morning 
the young convert was found in the camp 
with shining face telling in simple words of 
the Saviour he had found. The mother's 
heart was full — she had given this child to 



A. L. P. GREEN. 261 

God at his birth, with a prayer that he might 
be called to preach the gospel. She received 
this early conversion as the token that her 
prayer would be answered fully, and there 
was a new joy in her soul, and there was a new 
incentive to faith, patience, and energy in the 
life of the unselfish, saintly woman who car- 
ried the burden of a husband and sixteen chil- 
dren on her true and loving heart. 

The boy grew in stature and in grace. Two 
years of schooling, such as the times afforded, 
among the hills of Rhea county, East Tennes- 
see, gave him the elements of an English edu- 
cation, and furnished him the key with which 
he unlocked the treasuries of varied and ex- 
tensive knowledge. Before he was seventeen 
years old he was a class-leader — a fact at which 
we may wonder rather than an example for us 
to follow. In those days a class-leader needed 
to possess a sound religious experience, a fer- 
vent soul, and good common sense; and if he 
was ready and melodious in holy song, so much 
the better. There was no great strain put up- 
on him as a theologian — theology, strictly so- 
called, was left mostly to the pulpit giants and 
polemic pamphleteers. But it was no common 
boy who was chosen to lead a class when Chris- 
tianity in Tennessee was of the sturdy and 



262 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



heroic type, and religious experiences were 
clear-cut and thorough, and all superficiality 
and sham was at a discount with the men and 
women who exhibited in their fight against 
sin the decision and energy that were called 
forth in their conflict with nature and with the 
wild savages of the new country they were 
subduing to the reign of civilization. 

The young class-leader was soon licensed to 
exhort. This was then the straight path to 
the pulpit. As an exhorter he went round with 
the circuit-rider, the Rev. Barton Brown, mak- 
ing such impassioned appeals to the people as 
caused them to tremble and weep, and to give 
to the discerning the conviction that the Lord 
was opening the way for a man of no common 
mold to join the itinerant army of American 
Methodism. The Spirit of the Lord was up- 
on the tall yet smooth-faced young exhorter, 
whose soul was thrilled by internal voices 
that called to him, and whose heart was stirred 
with awe mingled with a solemn delight at the 
thought that a dispensation of the gospel had 
been committed to him. 

Called of God, he was caught in the whirl 
of the providential wheel, and was borne on- 
ward to his destined work. The decisive test 
came in this way: One Sunday morning the 



A. L. P. GREEN. 263 



kindly and keen-sighted Brown said to liim, 
"Aleck, you must preach to-day at eleven." 
This brought him face to face with the issue 
to which he had been gravitating. He decided 
it on his knees in prayer. Behind a large 
stump in a field of tall, green corn, not far 
from the church, he knelt, and, baring his 
heart before the Lord, sought light at its 
source. " Not once did he go, but eleven times 
in three hours; so that he made a beaten path 
by passing twenty-two times to and fro to wres- 
tle with God." Those three hours from eight 
o'clock to eleven on that quiet Sabbath-day, in 
Honey-comb Yalley, were never forgotten by 
him — they settled for life the great question 
that had so agitated his mind. He preached 
at eleven o'clock. The decision reached while 
kneeling among the waving corn under the 
blue sky of North Alabama was never recanted 
nor regretted by him. With the joy of full 
consecration he threw himself without reserve 
into the work of the ministry, and for more 
than fifty years he put all his genius, energy, 
prayer, and love into his high vocation. 

He was admitted on trial in the Tennessee 
Conference in 1824, and was appointed to the 
Jackson Circuit (in Alabama). The Kev. 
William McMahon was his presiding elder — 



264 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



and it was a fortunate circumstance for the 
young itinerant that he had the counsel and 
the example of that strong -limbed, strong- 
willed, clear-headed, brave -souled pioneer 
Methodist leader, whose foot-prints will be 
found in North Alabama as long as the Black 
Warrior River shall cut its way through its 
rocky hills. Among those mountains the young 
preacher rode and preached, and sung and 
shouted. This quaint entry in his journal 
(date May, 1826) gives a glimpse of the man 
and the times: "This Avas a memorable day to 
me, for I was very sick all day; and being all 
alone, I had opportunity for meditation. I 
had some happy moments in thinking of the 
joys of heaven. At eight p.m. I reached the 
foot of the mountain, and stopped with a Mr. 
Brown. It was to me a disagreeable night, for 
there were six or seven dark-looking men there, 
who staid all night, whose principal employ- 
ment was to drink whisky and argue on Script- 
ure." This was not the only time, nor were 
the mountains of the Jackson Circuit the only 
locality, in which theology and whisky have 
been strangely mixed. All of what was then 
called the West was stirred with religious ex- 
citement; skeptics were confounded; hardened 
sinners were melted into contrition; the masses 



A. L. P. GREEN. 



265 



of the people were brought under the spell of 
the mysterious and all-pervading spiritual in- 
fluence that was rocking the continent like the 
throes of a moral earthquake, and thrilling 
the hearts of the multitudes with the glad 
news of a free gospel and a full salvation. 
Here is a vivid touch that puts the jjicture 
of the time before us: "October 2, 1826. — -I 
started to a camp- meeting at Winchester, Ten- 
nessee. I think there were just fifteen in com- 
pany, several of whom had professed religion 
at Honey-comb. When we were about three 
miles on the Avay Brother Harris commenced 
singing; and being very warm in religion, he 
began to shout; after which several others 
joined in, which continued for twelve miles 
and about two hours and a half. I was fear- 
ful that a number of young horses would take 
fright; but it appeared that the good Lord 
helped them (the riders) to sit on their sad- 
dles, for they let go their bridles, clasped their 
hands, and made motions that made the horses 
run at full speed; but not one of them was 
hurt. The people living along the way were 
very wicked, and as we passed they would 
crowd to their doors and stare at us as if they 
thought we were deranged. After riding ten 
miles we came to the forks of the road, where 



26Q CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the party divided, and a shout went both ways. 
Such expressions of power I have never seen 
before, and there was no scoffing among the 
people." Such a performance now by a com- 
pany of brethren on their way to a camp- 
meeting would be likely to elicit a remark like 
that recorded in the thirteenth verse of the 
second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. 

On the Limestone Circuit he traveled and 
labored with James McFerrin, a man whose 
ability, zeal, and courage made him a leader of 
the itinerant hosts, and the worthy progenitor 
of the remarkable family of preachers that 
went out from his household, chief among 
whom towers John B. McFerrin, perhaps the 
most unique character that Methodism has 
developed during the last half of the present 
century. Under date of November 19, 1827, 
the young preacher says: "On this day we 
finished our year's labor, in which I preached 
two hundred and fifty times. Brother Mc- 
Ferrin and I received two hundred and thirty- 
five into the Church, and turned out twenty." 
The next year on the same circuit was much 
like the first^fuU of labor and fruitful of 
success. At one camp - meeting sixty - three 
persons were converted, and fifty joined the 
Church. On the Madison Circuit the next 



A. L. P. GREEN. 267 



year, with GreeiiYille T. Henderson as junior 
preacher, his labors were again largely blessed. 
"Brother Henderson and I had much peace 
this year. We received into the Church four 
hundred persons." The next year he was ap- 
pointed to Nashville— a place with which his 
name and fame will be identified as long as its 
marble Capitol shall sit in its classic beauty on 
the rounded hill above the Cumberland. Dur- 
ing his first year in Nashville five hundred per- 
sons were added to the Church. Lewis Gar- 
rett was the presiding elder. That was a stal- 
wart, alliterated trio — Garrett, Gwin, Green. 
The last-named and youngest of the three 
found in the counsel and companionship of 
the other two the stimulus that favored his 
rapid mental and spiritual development. At 
this time he met Bishop McKendree. There 
was perhaps a little reserve on the one side 
and shyness on the other at first. The stately 
dignity of the venerated bishop and the exu- 
berant animal life and irrepressible humor of 
the rising young pastor was a barrier to near 
approach on either side. But it did not take 
long for them to know and love each other. 
The quiet old bishop soon took delight in the 
society of his young friend. The charm of 
his extraordinary social qualities, and his esti- 



268 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



mate of his genius and character, grew upon 
him rapidly. The wise old leader saw that 
beneath the sparkle of wit and humor on the 
surface there were profound depths of thought 
and feeling, and that along with a poetic fancy 
that gilded whatever he touched, and an im- 
agination that at times swept the heavens with 
imperial wing, he was prudent in speech, of 
remarkably sound judgment, and possessed of 
the rare power of doing much work with little 
noise and apparent ease. Association with 
such a man as McKendree came opportunely 
to broaden and strengthen the young man 
whose mind was yet plastic and whose charac- 
ter was rounding into permanent form in the 
midst of the new influences and heavier re- 
sponsibilities of his pastorate in Nashville. 

This year he married. His chosen — Ann 
Elliston — ^was, like his own mother, a girl- 
ish bride, in her fifteenth year, just budded 
into sweet young womanhood. She was his 
good angel. With her hand and fortune she 
gave him a single-hearted devotion that was 
singularly beautiful. She lived for him as 
wholly as he lived for the Church. As he rose 
to fame and influence among his brethren she 
stood by his side, her true heart responsive to 
his in its devotion to Christ, and exulting with 



A. L. P. GREEN. 269 



a womanly joy in the success that crowned his 
labors as a master- workman. The slender, 
graceful, blue-eyed wife survived the strong- 
bodied husband on whom she leaned for so 
many happy years ; and in ripened beauty and 
sweetness of Christian character she faded 
away from mortal sight, and passed on to the 
light undimmed, in 1881. 

In 1832, when he was but twenty-six years 
old, he was elected to the General Conference 
which met in Philadelphia that year. The 
next year he was made presiding elder of the 
Cumberland District, the territory of which 
extended from the fragrant cedar-forests of 
Wilson county to the rich river-bottoms and 
dry oak-ridges of Stewart county. This was 
indeed almost phenomenal precocity and rapid 
promotion. But his advancement did not out- 
run his qualifications. He is described at 
this time as " a good preacher — religious, pru- 
dent, healthy, and social" — and it is added, 
"he knew men, and could adapt himself to all 
classes." These gifts, with a superior knowl- 
edge of wood-craft, eminently fitted him for 
the functions of the presiding eldership. On 
both sides of the river his district was soon in 
a blaze of revival. The young presiding eld- 
er, with Fountain E. Pitts and John W. Han- 



270 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ner, beginning at Nashville, ranged over Mid- 
dle Tennessee in an evangelistic tour. Earely 
in the history of the Church have three such 
men been thus thrown together, and seldom 
have such results been witnessed as followed. 
The strongholds of sin were stormed, and the 
banners of Methodism victoriously planted 
upon their broken walls. Green's measured 
but resistless movement, the power and pathos 
of Pitts in preaching and the witchery of his 
music in holy song, and the blended strength 
and finish of Hanner, the pulpit wizard — it 
was a matchless combination of diverse yet 
effective elements. At the same time in and 
around Nashville could be heard the ringing 
strokes of the mighty battle-ax of John B. Mc- 
Ferrin, the Coiir de Leon of the Methodist cru- 
saders, while the voice of the veteran Gwin, 
now gray-haired and worn, was still heard 
cheering on the victorious hosts. The powers 
and the fame of Green increased steadily. 
From Nashville as a center, his influence ra- 
diated in all directions. Settling his family 
there, he itinerated without hinderance. Pos- 
sessing an ample fortune, which grew not by 
speculation but by prudent investments in a 
growing city, he served the Church at his own 
cost, and put many a cheerfully given dollar 



A. L. P GREEN. 271 



into its treasury besides. It would be diffi- 
cult to say whether he was most valued as a 
man of affairs or as a great preacher. If not 
a bishop, he was the bosom friend and coun- 
selor of bishops. We have seen how Mc- 
Kendree confided in him and leaned on him. 
He held a similar relation to Bishop Soule, 
and they stood together shoulder to shoulder 
in more than one of the great crises of the 
stormy period of American Methodist history. 
Even more intimate was his relation to Bishop 
Paine, whose love for him as a man was only 
equaled by his admiration for him as a preach- 
er and as an ecclesiastical statesman of the 
first order. He was the peer of these historic 
men. His mind moved on the same plane 
with theirs ; he was actuated by the same mo- 
tives; he gave himself as unreservedly to the 
same sacred cause, and labored with the same 
unselfish zeal. And another bishop — Mc- 
Tyeire — who came upon the stage at a later 
day, found in him his most helpful coadjutor 
in the work of which Vanderbilt University 
is the outcome. He was many-sided, and 
touched the Church and the world with pow- 
er at many points. As a preacher during 
the fifty years of his ministry the number 
who were awakened, persuaded, and won to 



272 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Christ by his preaching will be one of the 
joyful revelations of the judgment-day. Of 
the still greater number of persons who were 
beneficially affected by his indirect influence 
no estimate can be made until then. As a 
legislator he was clear-headed and far-seeing. 
He was a masterly parliamentary tactician — 
he knew how to convince, persuade, and con- 
vert minorities into majorities, and to hold 
majorities in check. It was his masterly hand 
that guided to a successful issue the great ec- 
clesiastical lawsuit that grew out of the divis- 
ion of the Church. It was the same firm yet 
gentle and cautious hand that helped to open 
the doors of the judicatories of the Church to 
the laity, and to throw wide the door for the 
admission of its ministry to the halls of lib- 
eral learning. His wise and kindly words 
settled many a needless but hurtful dispute 
among brethren, and his patience and tact, like 
lubricating oil, made the machinery of Church 
business run smoothly over rough roads. He 
was something of a Richelieu without his guile; 
a Fabius unstained by blood. 

He stood like a massive pillar supporting 
the structure of the Methodism he loved. 
Throughout the whole Church and beyond its 
lines he was regarded with veneration and 



A. L. P. GREEN. 273 



ajffection. The Tennesseans held him close to 
their hearts, and were ready to follow where 
he led. But one other name among Tennes- 
see Methodists of his generation stands as 
high as his, and they will go down to poster- 
ity indissolubly linked together as the nn- 
croAvned chiefs of the itinerant hosts. 

He died July 15, 1874. He had long been 
a sufferer; his strong constitution resisted the 
assaults of a disease that obstinately held its 
deadly grip. To the very last he labored for 
the Church. The closing words of his last 
will and testament were: " My children, live in 
peace, and meet me in heaven." His faith 
was firm under the final test. " What I have 
been preaching is true!" he exclaimed as he 
was about to die. The great soul was gently 
launched upon the shoreless sea: " he asked his 
son Frank to turn him upon his side, and with- 
out gasping for breath, or death-rattle, or any 
struggle, he was dead." 

Six feet in height, well-formed, deep-chested, 
weighing about two hundred pounds; noble 
in figure; of deliberate and easy carriage, with 
features rather small and regular; the expres- 
sion of the face that of blended penetration, 
kindness, and humor; the blue eyes having an 
introspective look even when in animated con- 
18 



27'4 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



versation that hinted of the thoughtful brain 
that lay behind them; a head whose well- 
rounded proportions were indicative of his 
well-balanced intellectual powers; a presence 
at once dignified and gentle; a voice clear and 
musical; a personality powerful without self- 
assertion, and attractive without conscious ef- 
fort to be so — the figure of A. L. P. Green will 
tower in the forefront of the moving hosts of 
our Methodism until they shall lay down the 
weapons of their militant march and take up 
their palms and harps. 








PETElJ DOUB. 



f etiOF Bsub 




AEE, rugged, granite-grained Pe- 
ter Doub! In his day lie rode 
the sea of theological controversy 
like a Dutch man-of-war of the 
olden time, heayy-keeled, carry- 
ing big guns solid-shotted, with canvas spread 
to the gale, ready to encounter any hostile 
craft that crossed its path. Fearless, guileless, 
blameless, he led the hosts of Methodism from 
the Narrows of the Yadkin, in North Carolina, 
to the Culpepper hills, in Old Virginia. He 
belonged to a band of giant-like men who 
planted the Church in all that fair and fer- 
tile region, and left upon it their indelible 
marks. They were strong, steady, fervent, 
deeply grounded in Christian doctrine, and were 
equally ready to clasp fraternal hands with all 
who were disposed to be friendly or to take up 
the mailed glove of any theological knight- 
errant who wished to fight. 

He had a good pedigree. He might be 
called the spiritual grandchild of Philip Will- 
iam Otterbein — his father and mother were 

• ' (275) 



276 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



converted under the ministry of that great and 
good man. The father was a native of Ger- 
many who had gone first to Pennsylvania and 
then to North Carolina, settling down at last 
in the picturesque region at the base of the 
Blue Ridge, where land was good and cheap, 
the air salubrious, and the water sweet and 
cool. 

The glimpses we get of John Doub reveal a 
solid old German- American, fond of polemics, 
regular as a clock, pure as refined gold, witli 
small patience for looseness in doctrine or 
thriftlessness in business. His favorite books 
were the Bible and Fletcher's Checks. There 
was no foolishness about him; his family drill 
was equal to that of a military school. ^ Eve 
Doub, the mother, was of Swiss descent, and 
was a sanny-tempered woman, the light of her 
home and the benefactress of her neighbor- 
hood. They were a well-matched couple — the 
grave, logical, exact and exacting German hus- 
band, and the bright, intuitive, loving wife, 
with the breath of the Switzerland mountains 
in her lungs and tingling in her blood. 

The Methodists found their way to the Yad- 
kin country. John Doub had heard of them, 
and was strongly prejudiced against them; 
but like the honest, cautious German that he 



PETER DOUB. 277 



was, he went to see and hear them for himself. 
It was a case of love at first sight. He found 
that he was himself a Methodist without know- 
ing it! The disciple of Otterbein recognized 
the family likeness, and was glad. Forthwith 
he joined the Methodist Church, and opened his 
house as a preaching-place. That house was 
long a Bethel among the hills. The incense 
of morning and evening prayer ascended from 
its family altar, and in all its spirit and hab- 
itudes in that household v/as realized the di- 
vine ideal of the Church in the home. 

Peter Doub was born March 12, 1796, four- 
teen years after his parents had joined the 
Methodists. He was the youngest of nine 
children, and " was early made acquainted with 
his position," as he rather quaintly puts it. 
He had to give due deference to his seniors. 
Family government was a real thing in that 
family. When precept and admonition failed, 
John Doub doubtless fell back on the sugges- 
tions of the Old Book which was his guide in 
all things. The result in this case justifies 
the conclusion that the firmness that insists on 
unvar^dng obedience to parental authority is 
better than the laxity that allows a child in its 
early years to harden into the willfulness that 
so often proves invincible alike to human and 



278 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



divine persuasion. The Methodist preachers 
were frequent visitors to John Doub's. The 
frank, inquisitive boy loved their company. 
Among these men of God were Philip Bruce, 
James Douthet, John Buxton, Thomas L. Doug- 
lass, James Boyd, William Jean, and Edward 
Cannon. His admiration for these men knew 
no bounds. They were devout, winning, and 
wise. He had been taught to revere their sa- 
cred calling, and to regard them as the spe- 
cial messengers of the great God. He had 
been tauglit the Catechism, to read the New 
Testament through consecutively, and to give 
his views of a specified chapter every Sabbath. 
The visiting preachers talked freely to the 
bright, responsive boy, and thus strengthened 
the good impressions made upon his mind and 
heart by home religious instruction. 

He was converted at a camp-meeting in 1817. 
A volume of Benson's Sermons had fallen in- 
to his hands, the reading of which, he says, 
had "produced in him the most awful and 
alarming convictions." The presiding elder, 
the Eev. Edward Cannon, preached from Eev- 
elation vii. 9: "After this I beheld, and, lo, a 
great multitude, which no man could number, 
of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and 
tongues, stood before the throne, and before 



PETER DOUB. 279 



tlie Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms 
in their hands." The sermon stirred pro- 
foundly the heart of the already partly awak- 
ened youth. While the man of God was de- 
scribing the characters spoken of in the text 
"an indescribable, fervent, longing desire to 
be one of the company, and with them enjoy 
the bliss of heaven, came over his soul ; every 
nerve seemed to be strained to its utmost ten- 
sion; and ceasless streams of tears ran doAvn 
his face." When the invitation was given for 
such as desired religion to "come into the al- 
tar," he made several attempts to go, but was 
scarcely able to move. A young friend, see- 
ing his condition, stepped forward and aided 
him. That friend was Moses Brock, who him- 
self became a preacher — a man of eccentric 
genius and wonderful power, the story of whose 
life would be strange and thrilling. Together 
the two approached the altar; as he entered it, 
the agitated youth suddenly fell to the ground, 
where he lay struggling until night, finding 
no relief to his burdened heart. The next 
morning the camp-meeting was to close. He 
resolved that if an invitation should be given 
for penitents to go to the altar he would go, 
feeling "that he would rather die than give up 
the struggle." The invitation was given; he 



280 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



rose and went forward, and with him went fif- 
ty-three other young men who fell down before 
God. "About ten o'clock, while in a deep 
agony, and while he thought the earth on 
which he was kneeling had broken from the 
surroundiii^ earth, and that he was literally 
sinking alive into hell, the thought arose in 
his mind, ' Well, if I sink never to rise again, 
I v/ill try and look up once more, as it cannot 
make my condition vforse.' He did so, and 
with profound confidence in his Redeemer he 
asked pardon of his Heavenly Father. It was 
granted— and amidst the groans of penitents 
and the shouts of the redeemed, he rose and 
proclaimed his full deliverance. For the space 
of two hours or more he alternately shouted, 
exhorted the congregation, and encouraged the 
penitents." That was a prophetic and typical 
conversion — prophetic of the work to which 
he was called of God, and typical in its char- 
acteristic features of that of thousands who 
were converted under his ministry. 

Long before his conversion he tells us he 
had felt an impression that if ever he should 
be converted he would have to preach the gos- 
pel. Now this impression came upon him with 
new and startling power. It was the moving of 
the Holy Spirit upon his soul. He hesitated. 



PETER DOUB. • 281 



held back, trembled at the thought — being, as 
he tells ns, ignorant, timid, and every ^vay un- 
worthy. Bnt he finally settled the question in 
his own mind, and came to an understanding 
about the matter with his presiding elder. 
Nothing had been said about it to any mem- 
ber of his family. His heart sunk at the 
thought of breaking it to his mother. Can- 
non, the zealous and sensible presiding elder, 
undertook to manage the case. After supper 
with the Doubs one evening, when all the 
family were present, he said : 

"Mother Doub, I have an idea of taking 
Peter with me. Are you Avilling? " 

" I understand he is going to the mountains 
with you," she answered in her quiet, pleasant 
way. 

" That is so," he said, "but I do n't mean that; 
I want him to join the Conference. I have 
his recommendation for that jjurpose." 

The motherly heart throbbed violently, the 
hot tears came — with a choking voice she said: 

"Brother Cannon, he is too ignorant; he 
does n't know any thing about preaching; he 
is my youngest child, and" — here the tears 
gushed afresh — " I did hope he might be with 
me in my old age. But if the Lord has a 
woi^k for him to do, I can and vdll give him up." 



282 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Loving and true heart! When her preacher- 
son shall be greeted in glory by the multitudes 
who were brought to Christ by his ministry, 
and a many-starred crown placed upon his 
brow, she will not be forgotten by her Lord 
and his. 

.His first attempt at speaking in public was an 
exhortation, and it was such a lame and fright- 
ened effort that " he spent the night in deepest 
agony, and would gladly have hidden himself 
from the view of men." The discerning pre- 
siding elder thought no less of the youth be- 
cause of his modesty, and feeling sure that 
the metal of a preacher was in him, encouraged 
him to go on — and the ministry thus began 
continued for over fifty years with unflagging 
energy, unquenchable zeal, and almost unin- 
terrupted success. As to the young preacher 
himself, he tells us that he viewed this circum- 
stance as one of immense importance to him, 
as it made him so fully sensible of his weak- 
ness and ignorance that the impression was 
never erased from his mind. He never lost 
his sense of entire dependence upon God for 
ability to do the work to which he had called 
him. His first sermon was preached soon aft- 
erward. The text was Mark xii. 32, "For 
there is one God" — a rather curious but char- 



PETER DOUB. 283 



acteristic choice of a subject for a young 
preacher. The being and perfections of God 
were subjects of profound study to him through 
life; but he declared in his old age that hu- 
man language was too feeble to convey to the 
mind of another the "astounding views" that 
he held concerning the Infinite One. 

He was admitted into the Virginia Confer- 
ence on trial, and appointed to the Haw River 
Circuit. He had but little time for reading or 
study on his four-weeks' circuit with twenty- 
seven preaching-places. His aged colleague, 
Christopher S. Mooring, said to him one day: 

"Brother Doub, the people find some objec- 
tion to your preaching." 

"Well, what is it? " asked Doub. 

" They do n't find fault with your matter or 
manner, but they say you are too short." (Hap- 
py preacher, happy people!) 

'^I say all I know," said Doub, "and don't 
like to repeat." 

"Then," said the old preacher, "read more, 
study more, pray more, and you will be able 
to preach more." 

The old man's words struck home, laying 
the foundation of that eager fondness for 
books and reading for which Doub was noted 
during life. And his hearers in after years 



284 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



had no reason to complain that his sermons 
were too short. At a camp-meeting held at 
Lowe's Meeting-house, in Bockingham county, 
North Carolina, in 1830, he preached four 
hours and a quarter. During the delivery of 
that sermon and the night that followed sixty 
souls were converted. From being too short 
he became too long in his sermons, and then 
there was complaint on that score. His pre- 
siding elder, John Early (afterward bishop), 
took him in hand: 

"Doub, you have sense, and you know how 
to preach," said he; "but your sermons are 
too long; you wear the people out. You are 
like a man fishing up a river, who turns aside 
to fish in every little creek or branch that 
runs into the main stream. Keep to the main 
channel. You need not try to tell all you 
know in one sermon." 

It was a broad hint, and it was enough for 
the sensible, modest Doub; he took himself 
in hand. "I had a way," he says, "when I 
came to a place in preaching where there was 
a temptation to me to turn aside, of mental- 
ly whispering to myself, 'There are fish up 
that stream, but I must not go after them.' " 
Grand, docile, old giant! he fished in waters 
too deep for ordinary anglers, and his line 



PETER DOUB. 285 



went down far enough to bring np thoughts 
from the profound depths unfathomed by 
shallow thinkers. 

After a successful year's work he attended 
his first Annual Conference at Oxford, North 
Carolina, Bishop Eoberts presiding. Here he 
met for the first time John Easter, Lewis Skid- 
more, Ethelbert Drake, William Compton, 
John Kobler, and Isham Tatum — strong, holy, 
apostolic men, who gave tone to the body. 
The impression made upon the young preach- 
er was profound, and his exalted estimate of 
the dignity and sanctity of the sacred office 
was not lowered. 

On circuits, districts, and stations he labored 
with unflagging zeal and energy from year to 
year, growing steadily in the fullness of his 
Biblical knowledge, in the breadth, depth, and 
length of his sermons, and in popularity and 
influence with the people. Great awakenings 
attended his ministry in North Carolina and 
Yirginia, reminding Bishop McKendree, as he 
declared, of the -v^^onderful work under the 
lead of John Easter in Yirginia. During the 
four years he was on the Yadkin District more 
than seven thousand souls were converted with- 
in its bounds, two thousand seven hundred and 
thirty-eight of whom were converted at the 



286 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



meetings lie personally superintended. All 
the circuits were in a blaze of revival; on the 
Salisbury Circuit alone there were over one 
thousand six hundred converts in a single 
year. During the year of his second pastor- 
ate on the Haw River Circuit nearly one thou- 
sand persons were converted; but of these 
only about three hundred and fifty joined the 
Methodist Church. The greater portion of 
them joined the Baptists, there being, as he 
tells us, a number of Baptist preachers on dif- 
ferent parts of the circuit "ready to lead the 
young converts into the water." This led him 
to make a special study of the subjects of bap- 
tism, Church-membership, etc., and to preach 
frequently thereon. His fame as a debater on 
these questions was spread abroad through- 
out all the region round about, and proselyt- 
ing among his converts was checked. He was 
a lover of peace, and did not enter the arena 
of theological conflict from choice. But he 
had taken a vow to "put away all erroneous 
and strange doctrines," and when he saw the 
truth perverted and his work hindered by op- 
posers, he prepared for battle, and stood ready 
to contend for the faith once delivered to the 
saints, and which he felt must be defended by 
the saints. Arminian theology has seldom 



PETER DOUB. 287 



had so able a champion, and never one more 
loyal to New Testament truth. The effect pro- 
duced by his controversial sermons is illus- 
trated by an incident that occurred at one of 
his camp-meetings. A man sat down against a 
tree at eleven o'clock one Sunday forenoon to 
listen to one of his discourses, which proved 
to be one of his mightiest and longest efforts. 
Its effect upon this hearer was so overwhelm- 
ing that he did not leave his seat until sunset, 
when the Rev. Moses Brock approached him 
and asked: 

"Do you desire religion?" 

"Yes," said he; " but I am afraid I can't keep 
it; for Doub has proved that we can lose it." 

"Doub proved also," answered Brock, "that 
if we lose it it is our own fault — we are not 
obliged to lose it." 

"True; but I must go home," said the man. 

"You must come back again," said Brock. 

When the man reached home he told his 
family to get 'ready and go to meeting. As 
soon as they could they came to the camp- 
ground, and marched right into the altar, and 
the whole family was converted that night. 
The next morning they all joined the Church. 
There was something like a recoil from that 
broadside discharge, but the issue was satis- 



288 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



factory. His defense of Methodism was usu- 
ally aggressive, and whtn his cool German 
blood did take fire nothing could withstand 
his systematic and energetic onslaughts. His 
style as a preacher was expository rather than 
hortatory, logical rather than emotional; he 
moved along the lines of discussion with a 
steady, measured march, fortifying as he ad- 
vanced with Scripture proofs and arguments; 
but there were times when his great mental 
furnace burned with seven-fold heat, and his 
mind which had moved slowly and heavily, 
now all aflame and with every power aroused, 
bore down all opposition and carried the 
thrilled and wonder - stricken multitudes by 
storm. His logic caught fire from its own mo- 
mentum, and set on fire all within its reach. 
Put him up to preach at eleven o'clock on 
Sunday at a great camp-meeting where, gath- 
ered under a spacious arbor among the thick- 
standing and wide - spreading oaks, the as- 
sembled thousands sat eager to hear the word 
of life from his lips — the Sabbath hush rest- 
ing upon the place, a cloudless sky above, 
and the songs of Zion floating on the balmy 
air — he would survey the upturned faces of 
the multitude, and with deliberate and solemn 
manner enter upon the service. He read the 



• PETER DOUB. 289 



Scripture as if he felt that it was indeed the 
word of life, and he prayed as if indeed he 
was talking to a present and listening God. 
His texts on such occasions usually referred to 
judgment, eternity, heaven, hell, or some simi- 
lar sublime and awful theme. With inexorable 
logic, infallible proofs, and cumulative power 
he addressed the intellect and consciences of 
the spell-bound people, until at the last he 
turned loose upon them such a vehemence of 
expostulation and such intensity of pathetic 
appeal that a universal "break-down" would 
follow. There would be no room for the pen- 
itents who pressed their way to the altar, while 
the Christian men and women present, up- 
borne on the mighty tide of spiritual power 
that had broken forth, sung and prayed and 
exhorted as if a new Pentecost had come up- 
on the earth. And so indeed it had come! 
That camp-meeting preacher was as truly a re- 
cipient and dispenser of its power as was the 
seventy in the upper chamber at Jerusalem 
who first felt its heavenly breath and saw its 
fiery tongues. The Pentecost! it will not pale 
until it is lost in the effulgence of the latter- 
day glory. Its promise is for the last daj^s — • 
all of them — and is not to be taken retrospect- 
ively or with unbelieving limitations. 
19 



290 CENTENARY OAMEOS. 



Clarke's Commentary was his treasury of 
exegetical riches, but he thought independ- 
ently on all the fundamental facts and princi- 
ples of Christianity, and took wide ranges of 
thinking that were all his own. He tells us 
that his growing popularity was a source of 
trouble to him; he felt, he says, that "the 
people caressed him too much," and feared it 
might become an occasion of stumbling to 
him. He was not spoiled; and now we are 
prone to smile as we think of the possibility 
that flattery could have turned a head so hard 
and clear, or tainted a heart so true as his. 
But he knew what was in human nature, and 
was wise in feeling that where such sparks 
were flying there might be tinder to catch 
fire. He preached a thousand times while he 
was on the Yadkin District, and held one hun- 
dred and forty-four Quarterly Conferences, 
and not less than fifty camp-meetings. It is 
estimated that altogether not less than forty 
thousand persons were brought into the Church 
under his official administration, directly or 
indirectly. Of these many moved westward, 
carrying with them a pure type of Methodism 
to make the wilderness blossom, and a great 
company went on before him to the skies. 
Though ready and psrsistent as a polemic, he 



PETER DOUB. 291 



was so transparently true and fair-minded that 
lie made no enemies. Throughout all North 
Carolinia and beyond he was venerated and 
loved as a father, and there are thousands still 
living whose hearts grow warm with tender 
recollections at the mention of his name. The 
Church bestowed its unsought honors upon 
him freely. Four times he was elected a del- 
egate to the General Conference, and he was 
a member of the convention which organized 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at 
Louisville, Ky. He was not a talker in such 
assemblies; his speeches oh the floor of the 
Annual Conference averaged about one in ten 
years. But he was a close observer and a good 
counselor, and he voted the vote of a wise and 
godly man. He was as modest as he was great. 
The Methodism that was developed under 
his ministry was deep-rooted, reproductive, 
and wide-spreading. The men and women 
converted and nurtured under his guidance 
could give a reason for the faith that was in 
them, and transmitted their beliefs, their usages, 
and their spirit to children's children. One of 
his controversial tractates fell into the hands 
of a pale-faced youth in Missouri, in whose 
bright eyes flashed the fires of genius. It 
changed his whole life. The reading of that 



292 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



stray piece of polemics made the youth a Meth- 
odist in belief; he was converted and called to 
the ministry; became a preacher of wonderful 
power, an author w^hose books have sowed the 
seeds of truth in thousands of souls; and died 
a bishop in the Church of God. Enoch Mar- 
vin was doctrinally the Methodistic child of 
Peter Doub. Y/ho can measure the influence of 
that one production of the logical, sure-hitting 
old North Carolina polemic? 

There was some talk of making him a bish- 
op. Every man of his power and prominence 
is sure to be talked of in this connection by a 
circle more or less wide. The Church never 
called on him to serve in that capacity. When 
the angel of elections stirred the General Con- 
ference waters, another stepped in before him. 
The serene, reticent old thinker was not pushed 
to the front — and if not pushed by others, it 
was certain he would never think of pushing 
himself. Little did he care for titles or hon- 
ors. Had he been elected a bishop he would 
have assumed the duties of the office as he did 
those of the presiding eldership of the Yad- 
kin District, with modest misgivings; and it is 
likely that he would have made as good a rec- 
ord in the one office as in the other. His last, 
quiet days among the beloved Carolina hills 



PETER DOUB. 293 



where lie was born were none the less happy, 
and his reward when he was called up to join 
the glorified hosts on the eternal hills was 
none the less abundant, because he was not 
called by the Church to the chief pastorate. 
It is supposed that the Lord specially directs 
in matters of this sort, though human agency 
sometimes makes curious eddies in the current 
of ecclesiastical history. 

He died in Greensboro, North Carolina, Au- 
gust 24, 1869. His dying-message was: "Tell 
the brethren at Conference to preach the same 
gospel" — words that fitly close the testimony 
of a man who had tested the power of that 
gospel in the experience of his own grand and 
beautiful life, and who had witnessed its efiicacy 
in the salvation of so many thousands of souls. 

About six feet high; dark-complexioned; 
long-bodied and short-limbed, standing flat- 
footed and steady; large-framed, heavy-built, 
square - shouldered, with a thick neck sup- 
porting a powerful head; heavy under -jaw; 
firm mouth; large nose; blue eyes that look 
straight at you with friendly inquiry; raven- 
black hair in early manhood, but gray and thin 
in later years, rising tuft-like above the noble 
forehead and drawn forward in thin wisps over 
the temples; arrayed in garments of the true 



294 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Methodist-preacher cut, including the white 
neckcloth and turned-down collar — Peter Doub, 
sturdy, unaffected, saintly, manly, human, with 
a capacious brain full of great thoughts and a 
heart full of love to God and man, stands be- 
fore us the impersonation of simplicity, pu- 
rity, and Christian nobility: a typical North 
Carolina Methodist preacher of the earlier 
times. His epitaph might be written in the 
words of his favorite text: "I have fought a 
good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
kept the faith." The Church he loved and 
served will hold his memory precious forever. 





THOMAS STRINGFIELD. 




OLDIER blood was in his veins. 
His father was a Eevolutionary 
soldier, and was at the battle of 
King's Mountain, one of the band 
of immortal patriot-heroes who, 
in that bloody fight, struck the enemy a stun- 
ning blow, and turned the tide of war. He 
was a hearty friend and a fearless antagonist. 
His mother had some of the same martial 
metal in her composition, though it was tem- 
pered by womanly grace and tenderness. From 
both his parents he inherited a courage that 
was uncalculating and dauntless. He always 
took sides quickly, following his honest im- 
pulses and clear convictions. He might be 
rash, but never cowardly. If any cause he 
loved was imperiled, or if any truth dear to 
him was assailed, he did not ask what were the 
odds for or against it, but threw himself at 
once into the fight. And once in he fought it 
out. He was a volunteer soldier, but went in 
for the whole war, as sure to hold out as he 
was quick to start. With his hot blood there 

(295) 



296 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



was also a clear head and a strong will. Dar- 
ing, aggressive, yet unselfish and true-hearted 
to the core, he was a pioneer and path-finder 
in Methodist journalism and a valiant cham- 
pion of Methodism at a time when only brave 
men were willing to enter the field and only 
strong men were able to keep it. He blazed 
the ways that others have since opened more 
fully, and fought battles and gained victories 
that make it less needful for us to fight now. 
His knightly figure stands out boldly among 
the heroes who bore in triumph the Methodist 
colors in the militant period of the Church, 
and will hold its loving and admiring gaze as 
long as the breezes blow or the sunshine rests 
upon the Holston hills. 

He was born in 1796 near where now stands 
the town of Bowling Grreen, Kentucky. His 
parents were Methodists, and their home-life 
was such as to commend their religion to their 
children. Next to his mother his sister De- 
lilah was his good angel. She daily took him 
with her to secret prayer. It is a picture upon 
which to linger — the fair-faced, loving, saintly 
girl and the impulsive, active, manly boy with 
clasped hands kneeling side by side at the feet 
of God. The habit of daily secret prayer thus 
formed he maintained through life, and we 



THOMAS STRINGFIELD. 297 



cannot doubt that under God it was a potent 
factor in giving unity, consistency, and power 
to his Christian life. The family was visited 
by the strong and fervent Methodist preachers 
who at that time gave tone to Methodism in 
that garden - spot of Kentucky. It is not 
strange that the quick-witted, ardent-tempered 
boy was converted when he was only eight years 
old. He was converted as a child, and found it 
as easy to be a child Christian then as it was 
for him in after days to lead the vanguard of 
the Methodist forces and to bear the heaviest 
burdens in the service of the Church. Child 
religion is as real as adult religion, and bears 
the same relation to it that the buds and 
blooms do to the ripened fruit in the harvest 
season. When he was twelve years old the 
family removed to Alabama, and settled near 
Huntsville. Here he grew up rapidly, and 
got some book-learning from the country 
schools, which were not then noted for the 
breadth of their courses of study nor for thor- 
oughness in teaching. He was apt to learn, 
and kept what he acquired. The literary in- 
stinct w^as irrepressible in him. He loved 
books, and eagerly devoured all the reading 
that came in his way, from a family almanac 
to a well-thumbed copy of the old Armiman 



298 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



Magazine. His parents had taken their relig- 
ion with them into their new home in Ala- 
bama, and here, as in Kentucky, the Method- 
ist preachers were frequent visitors. In con- 
tact with such men as Thomas L. Douglass, 
William McMahon, James McFerrin, and oth- 
ers like them, the impressions made by Stamper, 
Crouch, Gunn, Lindsay, and others in Ken- 
tucky were deepened, and the impressible youth 
molded more completely into the spirit and 
form of Methodism as held, taught, and prac- 
ticed by those fuU-statured evangelists. But 
his education and the peaceful current of his 
life were rudely interrupted. Alabama be- 
came the seat of an Indian war — the last of 
the fierce, desperate struggles of the red men 
against fate and the white man, out of which 
they came decimated, broken, and despairing, 
but like a storm-cloud that had spent its fury 
still emitting sullen lightning - flashes as it 
vanished westward. At the call of the fiery- 
souled Andrew Jackson for volunteers the fa- 
ther and his two sons enlisted, Thomas being 
not yet sixteen years old. It was not in their 
nature to be quiet when the notes of fife and 
drum fell on their ears, or to hold back and 
let others defend their homes against the 
Indians. Three braver soldiers never fought 



THOMAS STRINGFIELD. 299 



under that dauntless chieftain, Avho was invin- 
cible alike in war and in peace. At the battle 
of Camp Lookout his horse was shot under 
him, but he himself escaped unhurt. In the 
fight at Emuckfaw he was shot in the fore- 
head by a sharp-sighted and close-shooting In- 
dian while standing within a few feet of Gen- 
eral Jackson. The brother was at once sent 
to him, and he tells us that "it was impossible 
to describe his feelings when he saw Thomas, 
as yet but a stripling, leaning on his rifle and 
literally covered with blood. '^ The wounded 
youth fainted from intense pain, and was 
carried to a private tent and tenderly nursed. 
On regaining his consciousness he found Gen- 
eral Jackson himself standing by him. "My 
brave boy!" exclaimed the kind-hearted yet 
iron-willed hero. The young soldier had a 
quality higher than physical courage: he pos- 
sessed the Christian heroism that withstood 
all the temptations of camp-life; he fell into 
none of its vices, and maintained his habit of 
regular private devotion. Their contact dur- 
ing the war was the basis of a life-long friend- 
ship between General Jackson and the boy 
soldier. As long as the General lived his 
former companion-in-arms visited him; and 
when the one had risen to be President of the 



J 



300 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



United States and the idol of the nation, and 
the other had become an honored and trusted 
leader in the Church of God, they would turn 
fondly to the stirring scenes of the earlier 
days. In their last interview at the Hermit- 
age the zealous minister of God turned the 
conversation to the subject of personal relig- 
ion, and solemnly put to the aged warrior the 
question: " General, how is it with your soul? " 
It was this element of unflinching fidelity and 
straightforwardness that was the bond of co- 
hesion between the illustrious soldier and the 
faithful minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Soon after the close of the Indian war he 
was enlisted and commissioned for service in 
a higher and holier warfare. His ardent soul 
burned with pity for sinners; he felt inward 
movings of the Holy Spirit that could not be 
quieted, and a voice sounded to his inner ear 
the command, "Go preach the gospel." After 
due examination he was licensed to preach, 
and with characteristic fervor and energy he 
entered upon his sacred vocation, and for for- 
ty-two years he labored on until he at once laid 
down his commission and his life. 

He was admitted into the Tennessee Annual 
Conference November 10, 1816. He first la- 
bored on the Elk River, Tennessee Yalley, 



THOMAS STRINGFIELD. 301 



Oahawba, Limestone, and Flint circnits, and 
the Nashville and Huntsville stations. In all 
these fields of service he was zealous, untiring, 
and successful in winning souls and building 
up the Church. When the Holston Confer- 
ence was "set off" from the Tennessee and 
Baltimore Conferences, he cast in his lot with 
the new Conference, and gave to it his labor 
and his love to the end of his life. As pre- 
siding elder, station preacher, circuit preach- 
er, college agent, Bible agent, and editor, he 
served the Church with extraordinary zeal and 
abilitj^ and with steadily enlarging influence 
and reputation. From the southern slopes of 
the Cumberland Mountains, in Tennessee, to 
where the French Broad Kiver leaps down the 
mighty canyons in the Land of the Sky, in 
North Carolina, he traveled, preached, de- 
fended the faith, and edified the Church. His 
fervor kindled the cold-hearted, his strong 
faith buoyed up the desponding, his splendid 
courage rallied the wavering. At that time 
Methodism was fiercely opposed in all that 
region. It was looked upon as an intruder 
where it was not wanted and could not be tol- 
erated. It was misunderstood by good people, 
and misrepresented by men blinded by big- 
otry. Forced to defend his Church, this fear- 



802 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



less yet generous, chivalrous champion of the 
truth shrunk from no antagonist, and left not 
the field until the victory was won. He did 
much to give Holston Methodism the type it 
bears unto this day — a Methodism that is 
friendly and hospitable to all who reciprocate 
friendliness and hospitality, yet ready to give 
a fair fight to any open foe and to meet all 
exclusivism and pretentiousness with good- 
natured contempt. It is a Methodism that 
responds with equal alacrity to the long-roll 
that calls to battle when the truth they hold 
and love is assailed, or to clasp an honest hand 
in fraternal greeting when the battle is over, 
and the white flag of peace is afloat. It is a 
Methodism whose cradle Avas rocked by storms 
and that has had a sturdy growth, and now 
stands strong in that beautiful land where 
sparkling waters flash along the valleys that 
smile among the mountains that pierce the skies. 
He was the projector, editor, and publisher 
of the Arminian Magazine — first issued from 
Huntsville, Alabama, and then from Knox- 
ville, Tennessee. It was patterned in some 
degree after its English namesake and proto- 
type — a repertory of sermons, religious essays, 
and polemics, with a little necrology and a 
spice of polite literature now and then. He 



THOMAS STRINGFIELD. 303 



was a pioneer in this line — ^ancl in some sense 
Doggett, Bledsoe, Summers, Harrison, and 
Hinton have been his successors. He sunk 
some money by the venture, but had the sub- 
jective satisfaction of working in a field conge- 
nial to him, and of giving error ists and op- 
posers some hearty and heavy blows. If he 
did not find magazine-making a money-making 
business, his ink-spilling brethren have usually 
fared no better. Knowing his literary tastes 
and aptitudes, we are not surprised that, in 
1836, he was elected editor of the South-western 
Christian Advocate — the forerunner and, we 
might say, the beginning of the Christian Advo- 
cate, now published at Nashville. He stands 
at the head of this editorial succession — String- 
field, McFerrin, Henkle, McTyeire, Summers, 
Fitzgerald. Honor to the man whose bravery 
was equal not only to fighting Indians, but to 
pioneering in the religious newspaper busi- 
ness ! He bore on his body the scar that showed 
that he had been hit by the Indian's bullet at 
Emuckf aw,, and a depleted purse showed that 
he had battled with delinquent newspaper pa- 
trons and other perils incident to the opera- 
tions of an editor and publisher. By his pen, 
as by his voice, he defended the doctrines and 
usages of Methodism, which were still under 



304 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



fire. As a newspaper controversialist lie was 
direct, trenchant, and convincing, relying on 
simple truth and sound logic rather than skill 
in verbal quibbling and appeals ad popidtim, 
as the manner of some is in all the differing 
religious camps. Hence it was that his vic- 
tories were real, and conquests made by him 
were maintained. He captured the enemy's 
posts, fortified them, and held them. 

He was a many-sided man, and was put to 
many kinds of work. His tracks are visible in 
all these fields of service, and in some of them 
his were the first. 

His mother lived long enough to feel a moth- 
er's sacred joy in his success. She had gone 
to the then distant West, but her loving heart 
always turned to him, and her prayers daily 
w^ent up to God for him. "Never leave nor 
forsake the flock," she wrote to him from Il- 
linois in 1828, "but persevere until death." 
Then in a burst of grateful joy she exclaims: 
" Bless the Lord for religion ! It can make us 
happy when all earthly prospects fail: 

Though bleak tlie wind and cold the rain, 

And earthly prospects all be vain, 
And death be drawing near, 

If Christ be with me all is well 

I '11 disregard the rage of hell, 
And will not vield to fear." 



THOMAS STRINGFIELD. 305 



This ringing note suits the mother of a Chris- 
tian hero, and suggests to us whence came the 
principles and the impulses which were the 
inspiring and propelling forces of a noble and 
beneficent Christian life. It was his good 
fortune to be touched at every period of his 
life by gracious womanly influences. In 1826 
he was married to Sarah Williams, step-daugh- 
ter of the venerated Thomas Wilkerson. She 
was very young, but first getting the consent 
of her mother the ardent lover won her pure 
and loving heart, and they were married while 
yet she was in her early teens. For fifteen hap- 
py years she was the light of his home. Her 
spiritual insight, quick womanly intuition, in- 
vincible patience, and undoubting faith put 
sweetness and power into his life. When she 
died in 1841 he felt that all his earthly joy 
was buried with her in the grave. In 1843 he 
met Mrs. Mary H. Cockrill near Courtland, 
Alabama — a cultured, lovely, faithful Christian 
lady, who had known a sorrow like his own. 
They were attracted to each other by the sub- 
tle power that interprets soul to soul, and they 
were married. These second marriages often 
jar upon sensitive hearts, and sometimes sow 
the seeds of endless discord in the sacred cir- 
cle of the home. But it is not always so. 
20 



806 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



There are sweet and holy women who seem to 
be born for step-motherhood. They are moth- 
ers of motherless children, the rebuilders of 
shattered homes. Blessings on all good step- 
mothers ! No brighter crowns than theirs will 
be worn in heaven. Mary Cockrill was one of 
these, and every one of the eight children she 
took in charge bore the impress of her Chris- 
tian influence and loved her with a love scarce- 
ly less than that given to a real mother. Bless- 
ings on all our holy Methodist women! If the 
real springs of the power of our best and great- 
est men could be found, on the same page that 
records their names in shining letters would 
stand those of their praying mothers, their 
gentle, loving sisters, and their patient, un- 
complaining, self-forgetting wives. From Su- 
sanna Wesley to Harriet Marvin this gracious 
womanly succession has never failed. 

He died at Strawberry Plains, East Tennes- 
see, June 12, 1858. His path had been rough 
toward the end of his journey. But his con- 
secration had been complete, and so was the 
victory of his faith. In the world he had trib- 
ulation, but in Jesus peace. The text of his 
last sermon was from 2 Corinthians i. 12: "For 
our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our con- 
science, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, 



THOMAS STRINGFIELD. 307 



not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of 
God, we have had our conversation in the 
world." It was the triumphant- challenge of 
a great soul in the retrospect of the earthly 
life and on the border of eternity. 

Medium-sized, compact, elastic, and full of 
energy; of sanguine complexion; deep-blue 
eyes that were very bright or very sad; hair 
rich auburn and abundant until silvered and 
thinned by time; features regular and hand- 
some; the slight drooping of the under -lip 
suggesting easy good nature, while the firm 
compression of the upper hinted of intense 
energy and will-power; a high, commanding 
forehead; bearing graceful and pleasing; with 
an effluence from his personality of that inde- 
finable yet unmistakable power that belongs 
to men who hold habitual communion with 
God — Thomas Stringfield, the boy soldier, the 
eloquent preacher and able polemic, the pio- 
neer Methodist journalist, the open-handed 
benefactor of every good cause, and the warm- 
hearted friend of every good and friendly man 
and woman, won and holds a conspicuous place 
among the many men of marked individuality, 
superior abilities, and exalted Christian char- 
acter that have illuminated the annals of the 
Holston Conference. 



BiwaFd MciSehee. 




INGLY grace and dignity and a 
rare humility were fascinatingly 
blended in him. In his genera- 
tion he was unique. He domi- 
nated and charmed his fellow- 
men. No man in his sphere could be or wished 
to be his rival. He was the muniificent patron 
of Christian learning, the helper ar^d protector 
of widowhood and orphanage, the strongest 
pillar of the Church, the patriarchal head of 
a household modeled after the pattern exhib- 
ited in the ages when angels in bodily form en- 
tered the tent-doors of holy men and spoke to 
them in the words of human speech. He had 
as many servants as Abraham, and was like 
him the friend of God. He was the product 
of a civilization that had its peculiar perils for 
bad men, but which touched the good with a 
peculiar grace and nobility. It was a civiliza- 
tion that demanded a forethought, restraint of 
the passions, guidance of the ignorant, protec- 
tion of the weak, and a patience with the slow 
and the stolid, that developed a type of char- 
(308) 




EDWARD McGEHEE. 



EDWARD McGEHEE. 309 



acter scarcely attainable under other condi- 
tions o£ society. If all slave-holders had 
been like him, slavery might still have passed 
away; bat it would have been by the sure 
working of moral forces rather than in a na- 
tional baptism of blood and fire. To such as 
he is owing the influence that enabled the Ne- 
gro race to come out of bondage into freedom 
without an act of violence to sow the seeds of 
wrath to spring up in harvests of bitterness 
and sorrow in after generations. Posterity 
will not withhold the credit due to these Chris- 
tian men who made the best of a difficult sit- 
uation, and who wrought this miracle of his- 
tory. Under the reign of reason and frater- 
nity in the new era, its just verdict is already 
anticipated by clear-sighted and truth-loving 
men. And men of his spirit in the South will 
contribute largely to the solution of the race 
problem in its present and prospective phases 
in this republic. African slavery is dead in 
these United States of America; few are sorry, 
and millions are glad. The fathers of the 
nation bequeathed it with all its embarrass- 
ments to their descendants, and upon this 
generation was visited the consequences of the 
blunders of a century. Divine purposes now 
unfolding before us when fully worked out 



310 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



will bring compensations to all. The good 
God meant only good to all in wliat lie per- 
mitted: he knows how to overrule for good 
even the crimes of the wicked and the blun- 
ders of the ignorant. In the retrospect of the 
next hundred years, those who come after us 
will see what is now hidden from our eyes, and 
the golden thread of providential purpose will 
be visible in all the warp and woof of the his- 
tory of the Negro race in America. The move- 
ment of humanity is onward, and the pillar of 
cloud and fire guides its march. 

Eoyal-liearted Judge McGehee! His envi- 
ronment furnished a fit setting for such a 
jewel. He was endowed with a multiform 
genius — a genius for government, a genius for 
money-making, a genius for liberality, a genius 
for winning love and for loving, and a genius 
for religion. 

He was born in Oglethorpe county, Georgia, 
November 8, 1786. This part of Georgia has 
been prolific of great men. Many of the early 
settlers Avere of the best blood of Virginia and 
the Carolinas. The mild yet bracing climate, 
the open-air life, the plain, good living, the 
traditions of a heroic ancestry, all contributed 
to develop a brawny, brainy, courageous man- 
hood, and a womanhood to match. The sons 



EDWARD McGEHEE. 311 



of these noble pioneer fathers and mothers, in 
field and farm, on the bench and in the pulpit, 
haye enriched the annals of their native State 
with great names, and made large contribu- 
tions to the glory of the younger common- 
wealths that have sprung up in the AYest and 
South-west. At an early age the large-fi'amed, 
clear-headed, well-mannered, ingenuous boy 
felt the touch of Methodism, and it left its 
gracious impress for time and eternity. Hope 
Hull and others of his fervent and robust type 
sowed in his soul the seeds of saving truth; 
it fell on good ground, and the harvest was 
abundant. Dr. Lovick Pierce was his contem- 
porary and early friend, and there was a close 
friendship between them during life. They 
loved each other strongl}^, and though opposite 
in temperament they were fully agreed in their 
doctrinal beliefs and in the maintenance of an 
exalted theoretical and practical standard of 
Christian experience and practice. 

He carried with him from Georgia to Mis- 
sissippi the impress of the great and good 
men who planted and nurtured the fair flower 
of Georgia Methodism. Their religion was 
of a kind that gave them great thoughts of 
God and small thoughts of themselves. Un- 
der their teachino: and influence he had re- 



312 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ceived the kingdom of heaven as a little child, 
and throughout his life the grace of humility 
adorned his character. The self-poised, self- 
acting, masterful man of affairs was humble, 
docile, teachable. Moving as a born leader 
among men, he walked humbly with God. He 
went forth daily from communion with the 
Father of spirits, and his gentle and reverent 
bearing revealed the august companionship to 
which he was admitted. General Taylor voiced 
what everybody thought when he said that he 
was the best man he ever knew: "I have known 
him," said the General, "to lift a drunkard 
from the road into the buggy and take him 
home." Sweet-souled disciple! He had learned 
his lesson at the feet of Jesus. 

As a cotton - planter he prospered won- 
derfully. He had the good judgment that 
brings what the world calls good luck. The 
seasons seemed to come and go to suit his 
wishes; his laborers were more faithful than 
others; he got the best prices for his crops. 
He cultivated his cotton-fields on true Armin- 
ian principles: he had faith in God, but that 
did not prevent him from plowing deep, plant- 
ing early, and keeping down the grass. He 
prayed to God for every thing, but he did not 
expect to secure desired ends without the use 



EDWARD McGEHEE. 313 



of means when the means were at hand. His 
possessions increased until his fields stretched 
out as wide as a feudal estate, and his servants 
exceeded a thousand in number. " His public 
spirit and liberality kept pace with his tem- 
poral prosperity. His strong and friendly 
hand touched the springs of enterprise and 
benevolence all around him. The State of 
Mississippi was indebted to him for its first 
railroad and its first cotton-factory. He was 
the munificent benefactor of his own Church. 
Centenary College was the child of his love. 
He originally purchased its buildings from 
the State of Louisiana, and his gifts to it were 
not less than seventy thousand dollars. He 
was also the chief patron of the Woodville 
Female Seminary. The Carondelet Street 
Methodist Church, in New Orleans, is a durable 
monument of his beneficence. He gave large- 
ly to the building, and when finished it owed 
him forty thousand dollars. This debt he of- 
fered to cancel if the Church would pay him 
sixteen thousand dollars in cash. When pay- 
ment was tendered he declined to take any 
thing at first, but finally accepted two thou- 
sand dollars, which he applied toward build- 
ing a church in Wilkinson county, Mississippi. 
"There was," says Bishop Keener, who was 



314 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



present, "a tremulous emotion and modesty in 
the manner of his making this gift that sur- 
passed the beneficence of the gift itself, for he 
seemed to be the obliged party in the transac- 
tion." His love for the Church and his prince- 
ly way were pleasantly illustrated on one occa- 
sion when the Mississippi Annual Conference 
met at Woodville: he gave horses to several 
of the preachers, and equipped every member 
of the body with an elegant traveling-blanket. 
No full earthly record could be made of what 
he did to equip, send forth, and sustain the 
ministers of God and for the support of the 
institutions of the Church in the South-west, 
but it is written with his name in the book of 
life, and will be known in "that day." He 
somehow found time — it would be better to 
say he took time — to give attention and service 
to all the interests of the Church. While 
cultivating six or seven plantations at once, 
and taking a prominent part in all matters 
affecting the material interests of society, he 
was always punctual in the discharge of his 
duties as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
He was spiritually-minded, " a man of much 
devotion and private meditation." A beauti- 
ful picture is presented of him at even-tide 
walking alone and communing with God in 



EDWARD McGEHEE. 315 



the grand forest of oaks and birclies which 
were the most attractive feature of "Bowling- 
Green," his family residence. He loved the 
songs of Zion, and to the last the old melodies 
of early Methodism fired his heart. He de- 
lighted in the worship of God and in the com- 
munion of saints. He loved the class-meeting. 
With rare good sense and glowing fervor he 
bore testimony for his Lord, and instructed, 
exhorted, and comforted his fellow-disciples. 
He was the farthest possible removed from a 
weak and watery effusiveness, superficial and 
emotional, and he was no less free from the 
icy stiffness and dumbness of a barren intel- 
lectualism and lifeless formalism. He did not 
feel that he had outgrown a means of grace 
providentially developed among Methodists 
that had nourished the spiritual life of its 
noblest men and women, that was rooted in 
human nature and in the word of God, and 
imbedded in the law of his Church. He 
could no more outgrow his need of the class- 
meeting and his relish for its exercises than 
he could outgrow his yearning for Christian 
fellowship and his aspiration for the fullness 
of the life of God in his believing soul. His 
habits were formed at a time when a holy min- 
istry called the people to holy living and led 



316 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



the way. He seemed to be as incapable of fall- 
ing below the measure of what he owed to 
God as of rendering a fellow-man less than 
his due. He wished to be honest with God as 
well as man. This sentiment of honor was 
thus exalted into a Christian grace, by the 
transforming touch of the Holy Spirit. " Had 
he been charged by his Lord with special 
care of the poor and of widows and orphans," 
said one who knew him intimately, "he could 
scarcely have been more attentive to their in- 
terests. He accepted the care of estates and 
Avatched over the education of youth with 
fatherly sympathy." In him the grace of 
hospitality was personified: his manner was 
the perfection of delicacy and refinement and 
of an engaging sincerity that at once put the 
visitor at ease. "Toward his guests, or the 
workmen sitting at his table, or to his servants 
at a log-raising, his courtesy was uniform; no 
matter how busy he might be, if a child en- 
tered the room it was always received with a 
smile and an extended hand." On the occasion 
of introducing General Zachary Taylor, then 
President elect, at a reception given him at 
Woodville, this noble and imitable self-obliv- 
iousness was conspicuous. On the return 
home one of the servants exclaimed: "Others 



EDWARD McGEHEE, 317 



may liave seen General Taylor, but I saw only 
master^lie was so polite and grand ! " 

He was a thoughtful and prayerful owner 
of slaves. At one time he thought seriously 
of going himself to Africa to superintend a 
colony of his own servants planted by himself. 
He was an early and generous supporter of 
the schemes of African colonization. Good 
and wi.se men are still looking in that direc- 
tion, and what was an unfulfilled aspiration to 
him may find its realization hereafter. All | 

possible effort was made by him for the pro- 
motion of the religious and social welfare of 
his servants. At family prayer — which was 
maintained by him all his life — the servants 
were called in, and it was no uncommon thing 
for one or more of the most trusted and hon- 
ored of them to be called upon by him to lead 
in the prayer after he had read the morning 
or evening lesson from the Bible. When the 
slaves were freed at the close of the civil war, 
he felt that a heavy responsibility was lifted 
from his shoulders; but his interest in the 
well-being of the Negro race did not abate. 
No unmanly whinings or unchristian murmur- 
ings were indulged by him. His pecuniary loss 
was enormous — ^but he never cared for prop- 
erty for its own sake; he was one of few who 



318 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



could make it rapidly and use it wisely with- 
out harm to himself. He bore himself with 
characteristic magnanimity amid the political 
convulsions of the time, and his noble quali- 
ties as a Christian never shone more brightly 
than then. His beautiful mansion, "Bowling 
Green," was burned by a regiment of Negro 
troops at the close of the war. He made no 
complaints. Leaving the ruins of the former 
house undisturbed, he built a second house 
just by its four blackened walls and pillars, 
which remained as a monument of the troub- 
lous times now happily past. Exalted good- 
ness gives no exemption from temporal calam- 
ity when the red devil of war is unchained. 

He had no relish for public life. He dem- 
onstrated that an American citizen may be 
public-spirited and patriotic without seeking 
official position. He served several terms in 
the Legislature of Mississippi at the earnest 
demand of his fellow-citizens, who knew that 
he possessed in an eminent degree the quali- 
ties that make a good law-maker. His legis- 
lative career was most honorable and useful; 
but as soon as he could follow his own wishes 
without disregarding the obligations of citizen- 
ship, he returned to private life. President 
Taylor offered him the Secretaryship of the 



EDWARD McGEHEE. 819 



United States Treasury, but lie declined, pre- 
ferring the independence of a private gentle- 
man, and shrinking from the glare of high 
official station. The fires of political ambi- 
tion that have burned so fiercely in so many 
men, and burned out what was truest and best 
in them, had no place in his soul — a holier 
flame had been kindled there by the touch of 
a heavenly spark. 

Such a life was naturally rich in noble Chris- 
tian friendships. He had an apartment in his 
house called "the Bishop's room," which was 
occupied by Bishop McKendree and most of 
his successors. The two Pierces, of Georgia 
— the father, phenomenal in mental force and 
phj^sical vitality, and his brilliant and conse- 
crated son; the intellectually massive and sin- 
ewy Dr. William Winans ; the wise and sweet- 
spirited Benjamin Drake; the godly and sa- 
gacious John Lane; the scholarly and noble 
Dr. William H. Watkins; the wiry and witty 
Thomas Clinton, and many others, both dead 
and living, of the servants of God, have occu- 
pied that prophet's chamber; and every one 
of them entertained the sincerest admiration 
and affection for their princely host. "It was 
indeed," says Bishop Keener, "as a blessing 
from the Lord to have been his bosom friend, 



820 



EDWARD McGEHEE. 



as a heavenly benefaction to have rested with 
him for a night, and to have merely carried a 
note and delivered it, and caught the impres- 
sion of such a presence, was to the young scarce- 
ly less than a benediction. I count it one of 
the mercies of God to have seen Bunting and 
Newton, of England, and Olin, and Fisk, and 
Hedding, and Soule, and Capers, and Winans, 
and Drake, but also to have known Edward 
McGehee." The blessed world where such 
spirits shall meet is worth living for. The 
promise of it is the only adequate explanation 
of a grand and beneficent earthly career. Ter- 
minating here, it would be the most pitiable 
tragedy: linking itself to immortality, it is a 
fit beginning of high and enduring fellowship 
and never-ending progress. 

He died at his home in Woodville, October 1, 
1880. His last days were serene and beautiful, 
but not without the pathos that gathers around 
age and sorrow and death. The ties that held 
him to earth were loosed one after another. A 
dear son who was tenderly nursing him in his 
last sickness died suddenly. It was the snap- 
ping of the last strand that tied him to life. 
"My heart is breaking — let me go," said the 
dying patriarch. "I am called, I am called — 
and must go" — and the white, kingly soul was 



EDWARD McGEHEE. 321 



cauglit up to the presence of the King of 
kings and to the company of the just made 
perfect. 

Above six feet high, large-framed, erect; with 
cahn, dark eyes whose kindly magnetism none 
could resist; straight black hair; a nobility of 
countenance and dignity of mien that led many 
persons after meeting him to say that he re- 
minded them of General Washington as he is 
portrayed in history ; a voice singularly gen- 
tle and yet commanding; modest as a village 
maiden yet grandly brave; a brain of immense 
power, and a heart tuned to the finest emo- 
tions; a prince in all the elements of leader- 
ship among his fellows; a patriarch in the 
fatlierliness of his great, affectionate nature; 
the strongest pillar of the Church, and the 
perfect model of a citizen; the friend of the 
widow and orphan, the builder of churches 
and of colleges, the white man's exemplar and 
the black man's protector, the benefactor of 
all accessible humanity, and the humble, ador- 
ing disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ — Edward 
McGehee may be taken to type one side of 
the civilization of the Old South in the midst 
of which good men and women, while as God's 
instruments they were training the lowly for 
whatever better things he has in store for them 
21 



322 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



hereafter, bloomed into a peculiar grace and 
dignity, and reached heights attained only by 
those who being tried in the fires come forth 
as gold. 







WILLIAM KENDRICK, 



William KendpiQ^. 




LEAR-CUT in Christ -likeness, 
solid and shining as fresh-minted 
gold, he lived a life in Louisville 
that made it easier for every man 
and woman in that city to believe 
in his Master and in human goodness. He re- 
vealed to such as could discern the real springs 
of human action what it is that puts into a 
man's hand the key that unlocks every door of 
earthly opportunity. Blessings on his name! 
It lingers in the loving memories of men of all 
creeds and of no creed in that fair city ; and it 
will not be forgotten in the homes into which 
he carried consolation and help, while the Falls 
of the Ohio shall continue to sing their nightly 
lullaby to its resting thousands. 

He was born in Paterson, New Jersey, Feb- 
ruary 11, 1810. His parents were English, 
stanch members of the Established Church. 
They were of good stock — well bred, self-reli- 
ant, religious. To them he v/as indebted for 
something more than a vigorous physical or- 
ganization and an attractive person: '"They 

(323) 



324 ceimTenary cameos. 



taught him Christian principles, industrious 
habits, and the manners of a gentleman." The 
spice of adventurousness that first brought his 
father to the New World took him to Texas at 
the time when the Mexican nation was offering 
extraordinary inducements for its settlement. 
Before the consummation of his personal plans, 
the Texan Revolution broke out, and he died 
(in September, 1822). Ten days previously 
his faithful wife had died in Louisville, whither 
they had removed in 1818. By the death of 
their parents, William Kendrick and his sister 
Margaret were left moneyless orphans among 
strangers. But the promise of the Father of 
the fatherless did not fail them. A happy and 
romantic marriage settled the fortune of the 
comely and loving sister. About the same 
time the brother was one day standing in a 
thoughtful mood on the sidewalk. A stranger 
passing by looked at him and was struck with 
his resemblance, real or fancied, to his own 
dead boy. A tender chord was touched within 
him. "My son, will you go home with me, 
and live with me, and be my boy?" Looking 
into the kindly face turned upon him, the 
frank, confiding lad replied, "Yes, sir, I will." 
And he went, and found a happy home on the 
farm of his foster-father, a few miles out of the 



WILLIAM KENDRICK. 325 



city. He was a healthy, active boy, and took 
to hunting, fishing, skating, swimming, and 
other country sports with intense relish. A 
boy bred wholly in the city is to be pitied. He 
loses the freedom, the amplitude, and inspira- 
tion of nature, and is stunted and narrowed. 
To look up at the awnings over the sidewalks 
instead of the higli, capacious sky; to gaze 
upon dusty streets and brick and mortar in- 
stead of grassy fields and stately forests; to 
look at street-corner lamps instead of the shin- 
ing stars at night — all this is cramping and 
dwarfing to a boy. If possible, let every boy 
have at least a few years in the country. He 
may be sharpened and polished in the city aft- 
erward, but the years spent in the country will 
be likely to leave the largest deposit of health- 
ful influence on body, brain, and soul. The 
boy's life at this time was happily touched 
with another gracious influence — that of a 
saintly Christian woman. The motherly heart 
of Mrs. Jane Shively was drawn toward the 
manly, handsome lad, and she sought with all 
womanly tenderness and tact to lead him to 
Christ. In all his after life the image of this 
good lady held its place in his grateful heart. 
A curious little bit of history comes in here. 
His foster-father having decided to send his 



326 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



son to college at Bardstown, expressed a wish 
that William Kendrick should accompany him. 
The plan was that the orphan boy should find 
employment in the town, and while supporting 
himself "enjoy important advantages from his 
association with men of learning in the place." 
This idea was original enough, but it did not 
work well. Finding nothing else to do, and 
feeling anxious to please his benefactor, Will- 
iam undertook to work for the village tavern- 
keeper. He soon learned that he was expected 
to spend much of his time behind his employ- 
er's bar. That settled the question with the 
brave, pure-minded boy. He promptly gave 
up the place. Bardstown and Kentucky lost a 
bar-keeper, but neither has suffered for the 
lack of such functionaries from that day to 
this. The genius of William Kendrick did not 
lie in that direction. Turning his back on 
Bardstown and bar-keeping, he struck across 
the country with his face toward Louisville, 
without a dollar in his pocket. He got lost 
on the way, but the people were kind to the 
modest, prepossessing lad, and he made the 
journey safely. If his heart was a little sad 
and lonely on the way, he was strengthened 
by the testimony of a good conscience that 
told him he had done what was right. After 



WILLIAM KENDRICK. 827 



a short experience as a mercliant's clerk, lie 
entered a jeweler's establishment in Louisville 
to learn that business. His physical and men- 
tal development was steady, and' his business 
education was rapid and thorough. He was 
honest, skillful, prompt, and affable. Truth- 
fulness was his characteristic quality. He 
had the keen, sagacious intellect that leaped 
to swift conclusions and right ones by the in- 
tuitive processes peculiar to the best women 
and the most finely molded men. 

In his eighteenth year came the great crisis 
and revolution in his life — his religious awak- 
ening and conversion. The instrument was 
Hubbard H. Kavanaugh, then a young preach- 
er, but already giving forth flashes of that 
genius that in coming days illumined the 
whole Church v/ith its brilliancy. It was a 
sermon after the old-time Methodist pattern, 
and full of the old-time power. That plain old 
church on Fourth street seemed almost to be 
rocking under the impassioned appeals of the 
thick-set, rugged-faced, bristly-headed young- 
pulpit orator. As was his habit through life, 
he gave first the law, and then the gospel. 
He painted the sinfulness of sin in such a light 
that the ingenuous young man was stricken 
with shame and terror. The word spoken was 



328 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



in demonstration of the Spirit. Upon the 
preacher descended the afflatus that in after 
days so often awed and thrilled the hearts of 
his hearers. And when, with gloAving face, 
heaving chest, and tenderest pathos, he pre- 
sented the crucified Jesus as the present and 
all-sufficient Saviour of sinners, the agitated 
penitent was enabled to believe, and was then 
and there born of God; his soul was filled with 
light and love, and the tears of silent joy 
that welled up from his overflowing heart told 
the secret of the great change that had taken 
place. His conversion was clear; he never 
doubted it, nor did anybody else doubt it who 
knew him and his manner of life afterward. 
It was an instantaneous conversion by faith — 
instantaneous, and yet the sequel of a process 
whose links stretched back to the prayers and 
teachings of his dead mother and father and 
the gracious touches of Jane Shively. With- 
out delay he united with the Methodists, among 
whom he was converted, and then for fifty-two 
years he followed Christ in a life of singular 
spiritual beauty and extraordinary fruitf ulness. 
His early marriage to the gentle and lovely 
Maria Schwing fortified him in holy living, 
and inspired him with fresh hopefulness and 
energy. In the atmosphere of Louisville Meth- 



WILLIAM KENDRICK. 329 



odism as it then was, his whole spiritual nat- 
ure burst forth into a quick and luxuriant 
growth. He had many gifts that blossomed 
out under the touch of divine grace. There 
Avas a peculiar power in his prayers. He 
prayed so much in secret that he went forth 
among men tuned for intercessory prayer; it 
was only necessary to strike the chord to evoke 
the music. "Any one who looked into his 
face would know that he prayed." He was a 
sweet singer. In the great congregation, in 
the social meetings of the Church, by the bed- 
side of the sick and the dying, he sung the 
songs of Zion, swelling the triumphant doxol- 
ogies of the sanctuary, comforting the heart of 
sorrow, and soothing the ear of death. He 
was a good class-leader. For many years he 
met a Sunday morning class composed largely 
of elderly ladies and widows. A beautiful 
picture is given of him and his class walking 
slowly into the church at the hour of the pub- 
lic service, their faces aglow from communion 
with God; the preacher, kindling with the 
presence and upborne by the faith of the pray- 
ing band, felt the touch of the anointing Spirit, 
and swung out with full "liberty " in deliver- 
ing the message of salvation. He lived to see 
most of his class " safely off to that better 



330 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



country." The abodes of poverty and pain re- 
joiced at his coming, and the chamber of death 
brightened with his presence. His own early 
struggles and sorrows taught him how to feel 
for the struggling and sorrowing ones around 
him, and his native kindliness of heart was 
exalted into a steadfast principle of benevo- 
lence by the grace of God. He had the mind 
that was in Christ Jesus. He fed the hungry, 
clothed the naked, and visited the sick and 
them that were in prison. He was the treas- 
urer of his Church, and the official dispenser 
of its charities ; but his philanthropic zeal was 
not measured by perfunctory obligation. He 
did good to all men as he had opportunity — 
and the life of such a man is full of blessed 
opportunities every day. The Church, know- 
ing his worth, placed him in the front of its 
working forces: he was steward, class-leader, 
trustee, Sunday-school superintendent, and a 
member of nearly all the Conference Boards. 
He was called by his fellow- citizens to fill other 
public trusts, and discharged his duties with 
a fidelity and good judgment that elicited uni- 
versal admiration. 

His business career was a remarkable one, 
He was diligent, skillful, and punctual. After 
a hard preliminary struggle, these qualities 



WILLIAM KENDRICK. 331 



brouglit liim success. He conducted his jew- 
elry business on New Testament principles. 
His yea was yea, and his nay was nay. He 
had but one price for his goods, and that was 
a fair price. " Have you but one honest jew- 
eler in Louisville?" asked a visitor of a citi- 
zen. "Why do you ask such a question?" 
replied the citizen. "Because," said the vis- 
itor, " I have asked half a dozen men to give 
me the name of an honest jeweler, and every 
one told me to go to William Kendrick." 
Transparent, truth-loving, truth-telling follow- 
er of the Lord Jesus Christ! the ethics of his 
Master compelled the homage of all sorts of 
men. But he was to be tested more sharply. 
In the great commercial crash of 1838 to 1842 
his business was wrecked. He gave ap every 
thing to his creditors. It was not without a 
pang that he and his sick wife walked out of 
the door of their house with their two little 
children; but they felt rich in their love for 
each other, and knew that they were doing 
right. His creditors had no legal claim to the 
property — the lot had belonged to his wife at 
the time of their marriage, and the title had 
never passed to him — but that made no differ- 
ence with the Christian merchant and his 
like-minded spouse. He started again at the 



332 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



bottom, his unspotted character his only cap- 
ital. During long years of unremitting toil, 
close economy, and patient waiting, he worked 
on with one supreme object in view. In April, 
1850, his long-cherished desire came to frui- 
tion: he found himself able to replenish his 
stock of goods with a surplus sufficient to pay 
principal and interest on the old debts that 
more than seven years before had been settled 
by bankruptcy. It was a glad day for the 
Christian tradesman — the day for which he 
had prayed and toiled all those years. He 
paid every dollar of the old debts, principal 
and interest. Now he felt that, with his faith- 
ful, self-denying wife, he could celebrate their 
jubilee." The responses from his creditors in 
New York and Philadelphia expressed a sur- 
prise and admiration indicative of the fact 
that such conduct was rather uncommon in 
the business world. There was a generous 
contention between him and some of these no- 
ble merchants. " This money does not belong 
to us," they said to him; "we long since 
charged it to profit and loss; and besides, by 
our sales to you before and since your former 
settlement, we have made several times the 
amount. We cannot keep this money, Mr. 
Kendrick." " Gentlemen, this money is justly 



WILLIAM KENDRICK. 333 



due to you, and you must take it," persisted 
the high-minded merchant. The dispute was 
at last happily ended by turning over the 
money to certain orphan asylums. " There is a 
chivalry even in trade, when it is regulated by 
Christian ethics. This Louisville jeweler was 
himself a jewel, flashing the splendors of a 
Christ-like character before the eyes of men. 

He was now forty years old. The thirty 
years that followed were prosperous and fruit- 
ful. Having been at first faithful over a few ! 
things, he was made ruler over many. His 
own Church crowded upon him labors and 
honors, while Christians of other Communions 
came to regard him as the representative of 
what was best and highest in the . Christian 
life of the city. His goodness was of the 
manly, clear-headed, practical type. The smile 
that lighted up his honest face did not conceal 
the strength of character that spoke in every 
line, and the glance of his eye was keen as 
well as kindly. He was as simple-hearted as 
a child, walking unsullied amid the pollutions 
of the world, serene in the midst of its pertur- 
bations, guileless in the midst of its decep- 
tions. 

It is an instructive fact that late in life he 
was subjected to fierce and long-protracted 



334 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



temptation. Inviting an intimate friend into 
the rear-room of his store one day, he locked 
the door, and with deep feeling told him that 
for some time past he had been strangely 
tempted by the Evil One. The enemy had 
come in upon him like a flood, and the strong 
man staggered under the assault. The friend 
was astonished. Could it be that this man, 
upon whom so many had leaned for support, 
was himself trembling in the storm? that this 
man, who had been a comforter to so many 
troubled hearts, was himself sinking down 
into the depths of spiritual despair? After a 
painful struggle he came out of this trial tri- 
umphant. Ever afterward there was a still 
deeper tone in his Christian life. He had 
wrestled and prevailed, and was thenceforth 
stronger forever. This experience will sur- 
prise no one who is deeply taught in the 
things of God. The kingdom of darkness is 
a real thing, and the holiest men invite its 
fiercest assaults. 

He died suddenly March 16, 1880. His last 
day on earth was a busy one; his last act of 
Christian service a visit to the sick. Return- 
ing to his home at nine o'clock at night, he 
was stricken down, and in less than an hour, 
with one sharp convulsion, his pulse ceased 



WILLIAM KENDRICK. 835 



to beat, the calm of death spread oyer 
his noble face, the chariot of God swung low, 
and his joyful spirit was taken up to join 
■the ransomed hosts in glory. All Louis- 
ville mourned him as a father. A citizen's 
memorial-service was held at the Broadway 
Tabernacle, and the immense building was 
filled by all classes and conditions of men, 
women, and children. The clergy of all de- 
nominations joined in the service, and one 
after another gave eloquent and touching ex- 
pression to the love and grief that swelled in 
every heart. The leading newspaper of the 
city headed its notice of his death with the 
words, "Our Purest Citizen," and thus con- 
cluded its eulogy of the man: "The young as 
well as the old will feel his loss, and his mem- 
ory, like a perfume, will linger long after his 
example, with his name, has passed behind the 
shadow of the generations that come and go." 
As they read this too imperfect sketch, his 
image will come back to those who knew and 
loved him. There he comes! a firmly-knit, 
well-formed man, of medium height, neatly 
dressed, quick-stepping and erect, the magnetic 
steel-blue eyes scintillating in quick yet kindly 
flashes, the heavy dark eyebrows and positive 
nose and chin giving an impression of decis- 



336 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



ion and forcefnlness, while the smile that was 
on his lips, and that beamed from his whole 
face, illumined it as a burst of sunshine does 
a bed of golden California poppies on a May 
morning. He w^as an embodied benediction, 
and the influence of his holy and beautiful 
life will live on until the end shall come, and 
the trump of God shall wake the dead that 
sleep on the crest of Cave Hill that lifts itself 
eastward above Louisville, the city of his love. 





GEOKGE W. D. HARRIS. 



M 


\ 



IS noble bearing would have at- 
tracted attention in the courts 
of kings. His eloquence would 
have given him high rank among 
preachers in any capital in Chris- 
tendom. His wisdom in counsel would have 
given him weight in any cabinet. His adminis- 
trative genius was such that he was kept in the 
presiding eldership in his Conference during 
all the formative period of its history. He was 
so in love with truth and so fearless of men 
that the boldest sinners trembled at his re- 
bukes, and the most flippant were awed into 
silence if not into reverence when he stood in 
the sacred desk to deliver the message of God. 
Yet he was so gentle, so guileless, so affection- 
ate and easy of approach, that all classes of 
persons loved him. He was the father as well 
as the leader of his Conference. The young 
preachers leaned on him while they looked up 
to him; little children broke through the dig- 
nity that hedged him round and nestled upon 
his knee; the reverend doctor of divinity be- 
22 (337) 



338 



CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



fore v/liom the learned and the great bowed 
with veneration was also the " Uncle George " 
whose name in thousands o£ homes was a ben- 
ediction. He was one of the three brothers— 
the Judge, the United States Senator, and the 
Preacher — and the greatest of the three. He 
lived not for himself, but for others; he worked 
not for fame, but for the glory of God and the 
good of his kind; but his memory will be fra- 
grant as long as the cotton -fields bloom in 
West Tennessee. Symmetrically great and 
good, he stands before us, tall and straight, 
without knot or twist, like a great oak of the 
Forked Deer forests near which he sleeps in 
Jesus. 

He was born in Montgomery county. North 
Carolina, January 25, 1797. He was converted 
at an early age. The details of this impor- 
tant event are not at hand, but that it was a 
thorough work Avas never doubted by any one 
who knew him. He knew the process, and 
could tell it in a way that proved to all initi- 
ated souls that he knew it. He had the white 
stone and the new name. 

He was admitted on trial into the Tennessee 
Conference in 1824, and at once took a high 
place among the giant-like preachers who then 
came upon the stage. He was naturally elo- 



GEORGE W. D. HARRIS. 339 



quent, and lie stirred up his gift by prayer, 
study, and practice in preaching. His English 
was remarkable for its purity and rhythmic 
flow from the start, but the channels of his 
thought were cut more deeply and the current 
steadily grew in volume. He was a diligent 
student. More, he was a prayerful student, 
and it was felt by his hearers that behind the 
great thoughts uttered by him in the pulpit 
there was a man whose lips God had touched 
with heavenly fire. He was himself a dem- 
onstration of the power of the gospel he 
preached, a living epistle seen and read of all 
men. During the sixteen years of his ministry 
in the Tennessee Conference he was among 
the foremost of its men in zeal, ability, and suc- 
cess. He did full work and good work in every 
place he filled. Methodism as taught and ex- 
emplified by him made its way among all classes 
of the people. Charmed by the graces of his 
style and convinced by the force of his logic, 
cultured men and women were led by him to 
the cross, while the humble and unlettered 
were won by his fervor and unfailing common 
sense. 

When in 1840 the Memphis Conference was 
organized he took a leader's place in it, and 
held it for thirty years. Transcendent ability 



340 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



as a preacher, purity of motive, dauntless cour- 
age, untiring patience, and a loving heart were 
his credentials of leadership. Thousands of 
souls were converted under his ministry, and 
many more were helped by him, as by no other 
man, on their way to heaven. He did much to 
mold the type of Memphis Conference preach- 
ers, a body of strong, consecrated men whose 
toils have made that fertile region spiritually 
fruitful as a garden of the Lord. Their admi- 
ration was so blended with love that the 
younger men of the Conference caught not 
only the inspiration of his grand thought, but his 
heroic and unselfish spirit. His influence still 
lives among them. There is not a preacher of 
that Conference who is not more of a man be- 
cause this superb Christian gentleman so long 
went in and out before them. A Christian 
gentleman: the words mean much, but this 
brave, pure, courtly itinerant answered to all 
that they imply. A Christian gentleman! In 
the pulpit, in the council-room, in the family 
circle, in unbent fellowship with brother 
preachers, he never sunk below this high char- 
acter. He had a vein of chastened humor that 
enlivened his conversation, and at times fla- 
vored his sermons. On rare occasions he ex- 
hibited a power of sarcasm that was never for- 



GEORGE W. D. HARRIS. 841 



gotten by its uiiliappy object. He never had 
need to deal a second blow. But it was seldom 
that this element was roused within him; and 
it flamed forth only against error and sin. Be- 
nign as strong, tender as true, the weakest 
brother only felt the strength of his arm as it 
clasped him. with fatherly and protecting em- 
brace. The impressiye dignity of his presence 
and the force of his character were illustrated 
by an incident of the civil war. An enemy 
caused him to be arrested on some false charge 
and carried to Fort Pillow, While waiting for 
trial, Sunday came. An officer invited him to 
preach; he consented to do so on condition 
that the chief in command would extend the 
invitation, and promise to be present with his 
subordinate officers to see that due respect for 
the worship of God was observed; and also 
that nothing he might say should prejudice 
iiis case on the trial which was to take place 
the next day. Thus the matter was arranged, 
the polite soldier telling him to consider him- 
self in full command for the occasion. In due 
time all were assembled for the service. The 
venerable man of God rose and said: "Sol- 
diers, your chief has put me in command for 
the present hour. My order is, that you be 
quiet and hear what I have to say." He sol- 



342 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



emnly announced the text: "Except ye repent, 
ye shall all likewise perish." Those bronzed 
and bearded warriors heard a message that 
day they did not soon forget. No one among 
them had the hardihood to make the least dis- 
order while God's faithful servant fearlessly 
warned them of the inevitable ruin that must 
overtake and overwhelm all impenitent sinners. 
After this he was treated with marked courtesy. 
At his trial he was promptly discharged, and 
his prosecutor was severely rebuked for having 
him arrested on so frivolous a pretext. 

The larger part of his ministerial life was 
spent in the presiding eldership. In this office 
he found full play for all his powers. He dis- 
ciplined and led the itinerants to battle and to 
victory. It was the day of great camp-meet- 
ings. Some of his grandest efforts were made 
on these occasions. Before these great popu- 
lar assemblages, under tlie inspiration of his 
theme, "without any seeming effort at oratory 
ho would move immense crowds like the surges 
of a storm-tossed sea." Even in these most 
impassioned efforts his periods never lost their 
rhythmic movement, nor his logic its connec- 
tions; like a mighty army, with disciplined le- 
gions and waving banners, keeping step to the 
thrilling strains of martial music, these grandly 



GEORGE W. D. HARRIS. 343 



eloquent discourses swept tlie whole field of 
gospel truth and carried all before them. He 
made but few speeches in the Conference-room, 
but he w^as watchful of all that was done, and 
was always ready to throw the whole weight of 
his great influence against any unwise measure. 

There was in him a love of adventure and a 
touch of the cavalier as well as of the sage and 
the saint. He loved the woods and the open 
air. For many years it was his custom, after 
the Conference-session was over before start- 
ing around on his district, to spend a week or 
more with some chosen friends in a camp-hunt. 
He was a sure shot, and no one more enjoyed 
the excitement of a bear-chase. There was a 
humanness in the grand old preacher that 
brought him close to the hearts of the people. 
Those days and nights in the woods, his annual 
recreation, were not thrown away. 

He died December 9, 1872, at Dyersburg, 
Tennessee. "It is all right," he said in the 
midst of intense suffering; and, victor through 
faith, the veteran soldier of Jesus Christ went 
up to receive his crown. His aged, patient, 
faithful, loving wife died in a few short hours 
afterward, and rejoined him in paradise. 

In his prime he was a tall, straight, well- 
formed man of dignified and graceful bearing, 



344 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



dressed like a gentleman, with a thoughtful, 
benignant face, lighting up and changing with 
varying emotion while speaking; a dark brown 
eye that seemed to invite scrutiny of every 
thought and feeling within his honest soul. 
George W. D. Harris, the father of the Mem- 
phis Conference, will be honored and loved by 
his spiritual children and their descendants as 
long as the voice of prayer and holy song shall 
continue to be heard in their homes, and the 
itinerant hosts he once led shall keep making 
their rounds in West Tennessee. 



:^ ^- 73 



:^ 




MARGARET LAVINIA KELLEY. 



i 


i 


= 
1 

I 



Maii'gaFefe Iia^i^ia Kelley. 

EE motherly heart throbbed with 
pity for every human being; she 
was wise with the wisdom that is 
love, and she won many first to 
herself and then to her Lord. 
The blood of the Scotch Campbells coursed 
through her veins. She had a touch of the 
imperiousness of that fiery clan, but it was 
softened by the humility and gentleness born 
of a higher kinship. She was as strong and 
elastic as finest steel. She could bend to the 
needs and caprices of childhood, and she could 
carry the heavy burdens laid on her with a 
might born of true faith in God. She mag- 
netized souls by the indefinable power that is 
given to some holy men and women above 
others. They are often but half-conscious that 
they possess this power, but they can no more 
fail to exercise it than light can fail to shine. 

She was born at Campbell's Station, East 
Tennessee, April 30, 1806. Her father. Col. 
David Campbell (son of Scotch David Camp- 
bell), was a soldier in the Eevolutionary War, 

(345) 



346 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



and was one of the heroes of the battle of King's 
Mountain, where the fiery vohmteer patriots 
struck a blow for liberty that made the place 
and the day immortal. Her mother was a 
Montgomery — a sister of Major Lemuel Mont- 
gomery, who fought and fell at the battle of the 
Horseshoe. Thus we see that she had Scotch- 
Irish blood from both sides; and there is no 
better for the making of both heroes and saints. 
Her family were Presbyterians, "true blue," 
spiritual descendants of John Knox and the 
Covenanters. 

She grew up among the East Tennessee hills, 
giving early indication of unusual strength of 
character. "While she was in her early teens 
John Kelley, a young Methodist preacher, 
came into the neighborhood. Unlikely as it 
might seem, his coming changed the destiny 
of Margaret Campbell. The young itinerant 
himself had but recently been caught in the 
sweep of the great revival movement that was 
spreading over all the land, and was all aglow 
with religious enthusiasm. His intense zeal, 
common-sense and direct way of putting 
things, got him a hearing for his Master's 
message. The strong-willed, thoughtful, af- 
fectionate girl heard him preach. She was 
just at the age when the whole spiritual nature 



MARGARET LAVTNIA KELLEY. 347 



is most responsive to the divine touch. She 
listened, was convinced, wept, prayed, believed, 
and on a tide of gracious impulse and oppor- 
tunity was borne into the new life. Naturally 
enough, she joined the Methodists, an older 
sister keeping her company. If there was any 
opposition to their action on the part of the 
hard-headed, tenacious Campbell family, it 
was not strong and did not last long. AYhen 
she was about sixteen years old her father re- 
moved to Wilson county. Middle Tennessee, 
and settled among the oaks, sugar-maples, and 
cedars near Lebanon. Soon after, she was 
placed at the Nashville Academy, then con- 
ducted by the celebrated Mr. Hume. Under 
his tuition and influence her mind developed 
rapidly. That vrise and honest educator knew 
how to touch the springs of intellectual life, 
and to waken the moral forces that slumbered 
in the souls of his pupils. 

With a mind well furnished and disciplined, 
and with a lofty ideal and purpose, she left 
school, and entered upon a life of Christian serv- 
ice that widened and brightened to the close. 
In an old vacant store- house belonging to her 
father she opened a Sunday-school, gathering 
around her the neglected children of the vicinity. 
At first the brave, earnest girl had no helper in 



848 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



this holy service, but the work was blessed of 
the Lord. She felt within her a burning de- 
sire to make money, and opened a day-school. 
The money thus earned she devoted to a sacred 
purpose that lay near her heart: she used it to 
build a house for the Lord, a brick structure 
which still stands as a monument of the love 
and zeal of a young woman who put her Mas- 
ter's cause above all the pomps and pleasures 
of the world. In the eye of God this little 
church is more beautiful than the Indian Taj 
Mahal, for it is the expression of a higher and 
more enduring love. 

It was perhaps a surprise to some when she 
married the Eev. John Kelley in 1833, but it was 
in the book of destiny that their lives should 
meet and flow on together^the deep-toned, 
steady, well-poised preacher, and the high- 
mettled, far-reaching, magnetic woman who 
ten years before had been won to Christ by 
his ministry. The hand of God was in it; it 
is in every marriage in which his will is con- 
sulted. Their home, "Itinerant's Eest," be- 
came a center of Christian influence for all 
that region, a light that shone afar. It was 
the stopping - place for the aged traveling 
preachers in their rounds, and their prayers 
and songs made it a Bethel among the AVilson 



MARGARET LAVINIA KELLEY. 349 



hills. It was also a modest school of the proph- 
ets; young men seeking education and prepar- 
ing for the ministry found there a home and 
counsel and help in their studies. It was a 
miniature Biblical school without faculty or 
endowment. In the faith and zeal of one 
praying woman are T\Tapped up potentialities 
that are immeasurable. 

A wider field of Christian service opened to 
her when her son, her only child that lived, 
was ready to begin his collegiate course. She i 

removed to Lebanon, the seat of the Cumber- 
land University. First and last not less than 
one hundred young men and one hundred and 
fifty girls were inmates of her house in that 
place. But one young man and not a single 
girl left her roof without professing Christian- 
ity. The family life was interpenetrated with 
a subtle influence emanating from the gifted 
and loving woman who presided over it. Un- 
der her inspiration and guidance the table- 
talks were made tributary to growth in grace 
and knowledge. Her womanly tact enabled 
her to invest these conversations with a social 
charm that held each young soul until it was 
drawn fully into the current of spiritual power 
that bore it to the cross of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. She had not only the womanly intui- 



350 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



tion that looks deeper than mere externals, 
but the spiritual sympathy and insight that 
drew yearning hearts to her and gave them the 
word they needed. Among the beneficiaries 
of her Christian influence was her own son. 
By her he was led to Christ while yet a boy, 
and when in after years he went as a mission- 
ary to China it was with her full consent, the 
natural outcome of her teaching and training. 
She kept back nothing from her Lord — not 
even this only child. She was the mother of a 
missionary family, and was one of the mothers 
of the woman's missionary movement among 
the Methodists of the South. While the 
hearts of Lucretia Davidson, Juliana Hayes, 
and others, were burning with missionary fire in 
Baltimore, the holy flame glowed in the heart 
of Margaret Kelley in Nashville. How wide 
is the illumination kindled from these lighted 
torches! In 1870 she organized the Woman's 
Missionary Society of McKendree Church, 
Nashville, of which her son, the Rev. Dr. D. C. 
Kelley, was then pastor. She originated also 
a home for fallen women in Nashville — a bene- 
faction which has afforded a refuge and given 
a new hope to many sinners like her to whom 
the pure and pitying Jesus said, " Go in peace, 
and sin no more." Gentle, motherly heart! 



MARGARET LAVINIA KELLEY. 351 



no jewels in her crown will be brighter than 
these. She threw herself into all the work of 
the Church in Nashville as she had clone else- 
where, with intense zeal and untiring activity, 
w^alking in the by-ways of the city among 
the poor and the friendless like an angel of 
mercy. When in 1877 her oldest grandchild 
was married to Dr. Walter E. Lambuth, a 
missionary to China, she saw in that event 
only the fruit of her teaching and the answer 
to her prayers. There was gladness in the 
sadness with which she looked to the parting. 
She died October 29, 1877. During her ill- 
ness she imagined her missionary grandchild 
and her husband were by her bedside, and 
constantly talked to them. When told they 
were to sail on a given day, she said: "I, too, 
will go home then." From the first she often 
talked of going, many times saying to her- 
self, "I want to go home." When asked what 
message she would send to the young mission- 
aries so dear to her heart, she replied: "Tell 
them to hold out to the last for Jesus." Pass 
the word along all our missionary lines! It 
has the inspiration of faith and the ring of 
victory. Her spirit was released near mid- 
night. At that very hour, lying in her state- 
room in the steam-ship on the Pacific Ocean on 



352 CENTENARY CAMEOS. 



its way to China, her granddaughter Daisy 
Lambuth saw—or thought she saw— her face 
gazing in upon her through the window. It is 
not difficult to conceive that before taking its 
upward flight to the skies her spirit was per- 
mitted to visit that ship as it plowed its way 
across the wide Pacific seas, carrying the mes- 
sengers of salvation to the dying millions of 
Asia. 

A figure trim, compact, and elastic, vital in 
every fiber; dark, tender eyes in whose glance 
there was a hint of slumbering fires; a strong, 
square chin; a mouth in whose lines might 
be read the traces of pain mingled with un- 
daunted courage and womanly affection; a 
short nose of Grecian mold; a broad and beau- 
tiful forehead, silver hair rippling around the 
noble head; her whole presence at once domi- 
nant and winning — this is Margaret Kelley, the 
counselor of youth and inexperience, the friend 
of the outcast, the mother of orphanage, the 
busy woman who did the work she found ready 
to her hand with all her might, with a heart 
aflame with love to Jesus, and an eye that dis- 
cerned the dawn of the brighter day that was 
coming upon the world. 

The End. 



